Gen13 Quarters
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: HP/Gen13 Xover Sequel to story "Harry Potter and Project Genesis", a series of random, and randomized adventures set during the months between Gen13's escape from the Project Genesis Compound, and their Southern Californian Villa that they'll soon be operating out of as the newest teen superhero team on the scene. COMPLETE
1. Prologue

Title: Gen 13 3/4

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. No actual spoilers in this one, just character stea—borrowing and rewriting.

Summary: At the moment, a 'What If' transitional piece between the story "Harry Potter and Project Genesis" and whatever may yet come. Overview is as follows; bit of a rewrite of Gen13 Issue 1/2 and Issue 0, only with Harry there, and considering a significant career change. Gang still splits, still runs into trouble, and still comes back together. _Where_ they gather, now that is the question!

Story:

Harry Potter sneered down at his adversary. This was, without a doubt in his mind, the most arduous, annoying, and outright pathetic challenge he had ever faced. To be perfectly honest, he wouldn't even be bothering if it wasn't necessary, which made it all the more annoying and sneer-worthy. He feared that if he were to look in a mirror, he'd see a bit more of Severus Snape in his expression than James Potter. Good thing there were no mirrors around.

Shooting off one last sneer to show his utter contempt, Harry finally deigned to finish his adversary off and get this over with. He had better things to do today after all.

Dipping his quill into the ink pot, the 18-nearly-19-year-old wizard wrapped up his answer to the essay question for the written portion of the ICW Hit-Wizard Certification exam. He'd already passed the practical and the oral presentations earlier that day. Supposedly this was supposed to be to 'Defense Against The Dark Arts' what a Potions Mastery Exam was to the Potions NEWT. Unfortunately he'd never taken his NEWTs, so he had nothing but his OWLs to compare it to and honestly he didn't see what the big deal was. It was easy.

Double-checking his work and feeling satisfied with all his answers, Harry capped his ink pot, put down the quill and turned in his testing paper.

The ICW Examiner accepted the parchment and put it with the rest of his test results into a magical folder, which remained paper-thin despite being filled with hundreds of pages of documents. Made it easier to carry around and file things, he supposed.

Bureaucracy, while both necessary and terrible, loved its paperwork, but at least magic made it _slightly_ less messy to deal with. Between shrinking spells, expansion charms, and being able to summon the required document without having to leave your desk certainly made things simpler, and it cut down on the need to 'properly' organize things into filing cabinets in the first place. Just 'banish' it back to wherever you'd initially summoned it from.

"Your results will be sent to you in two to three weeks," the ICW Examiner informed him, before marching out of the room.

Harry sighed. Not even magic could make bureaucracy go any faster though.

He nodded to the empty room and exited via the door he'd entered through rather than the same one the Examiner had used. Stepping outside... actually took him outside.

"Huh," he grunted and shrugged. He was pretty sure there was supposed to be an office on the other side of the door, not the lawn surrounding the monument known the world over as the Statue of Liberty. He distinctly recalled having entered the exam room via an office waiting room. Magic, go figure.

Stepping outside, he noticed the door vanish behind him as soon as it closed, and nobody was looking twice at him despite there being quite a few tourists around. Looking down, he noticed the subtle ward line where a Notice-Me-Not Charm had no doubt been laid. Clever. Hiding in plain sight. Still didn't explain why the American Wizards basically kicked him out of the local ICW office the moment his business was concluded.

Shrugging the whole thing off, Harry stepped over the ward line and walked out into the public, just another tourist visiting a national monument. Taking the time to look up at the copper statue, he smiled and appreciated the sight before making his way down to the waterfront and took a seat on one of the available benches there, looking across the bay at New York City.

Sitting there, he sighed once again and closed his eyes. He allowed a small amount of the tension that had been building within him to release and flow away with his breath. It had been quite a journey so far. And it promised to become far more very soon now.

It all started with the Final Battle at Hogwarts.

Decades long conflict, a civil war within the Wizarding World, all propagated by one man; the Dark Lord Voldemort, aka Tom Marvolo Riddle. And all stopped by one boy; the Boy-Who-Lived. Although, it wasn't really _stopped_ per se so much as a ceasefire was called. Things picked up right where they'd left off the moment Voldemort got his body back.

Harry and his friends spent months hunting down the means to put Riddle in the ground for good, and what progress they made was minimal at best. That is until they finally decided to stop running and went to Hogwarts, to put an end to things. Within twenty-four hours of their arrival, the war was decidedly over. Voldemort was dead and nothing of him remained to bring back, and his army basically ran at the _sight_ of a 'dead' Harry Potter jumping out of Hagrid's arms, alive and well. People were still dead, and there was a lot of damage, but the fighting was over, and the good guys won.

That was the beginning of his journey; the greatest triumph of his life, when Harry Potter saved the world and defeated the Dark Lord who had killed his parents and so many others. Thing is, nobody ever puts much thought in what happens to the hero after he's no longer needed. Such was the case with Harry, as they all forgot that he essentially had no home to return to, no job, and no family. Not any that cared whether he lived or died at any rate.

Harry quickly abolished that line of thought before he could actually care where or what the Dursleys were up to these days.

And so when the students were packed onto the train at the end of the school year to return home, nobody batted an eye about packing the hero of the hour on with them, and then leaving him alone at King's Cross Station. It was understandable; they were all busy with the clean-up and dealing with the aftermath of such a major social upheaval. The Order of the Phoenix was basically rebuilding the Ministry of Magic from the ground up, and his friends all had their own consequences to deal with.

Hermione had to find her parents from wherever she'd sent them for their protection. Ron… Ron had to bury a brother. Neville Longbottom, another friend, also had to bury his grandmother, and take the reins of the Longbottom family. Luna Lovegood had been in much the same boat he was, but her father was still alive so she did have family to return to. Ginny…

Harry sat up and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he held his head in his hands.

Ginny Weasley. His best friend's younger sister. He'd first noticed her in his Fifth Year, during the DA, but he'd been rather infatuated with Cho Chang at the time and couldn't see anything beyond his crush at the time. Over the summer, Ginny… well to turn a phrase, she blossomed.

He might have been concerned that he'd been spiked with some kind of love potion, only he happened to have an opportunity to witness the effects of such a potion first hand. From everything he knew about the subject, and he'd read up after Ron's bout of multiple poisonings in one night, a love potion's effect was instant and temporary. Even the subtler variations that weren't as _obvious_ as what Romilda Vane had used on those chocolates, the moment the potion was in their system the victim could think of nothing, _feel_ nothing but their love for the object of the potion. And then the moment, the very moment the potion was no longer in their system, in other words the moment they stopped being dosed, the thoughts and feelings faded as though they never existed.

Real feelings were more complicated than that. It was what convinced him that his feelings for Ginny were true. He'd fallen in love with her, though they'd hardly gone on any dates. But now… after more than a year apart and only seeing each other for moments, days at a time, and most recently on very bad days, he felt things had changed.

He still felt love for her. And from his memories he definitely remembered the lust from seeing her body and kissing her lips. But… he didn't feel like he was _in love_ with her anymore. Perhaps they had just spent too much time apart. Perhaps he had feelings for another. Perhaps he only needed to see her again—with his own eyes—to feel the passion he'd once felt for her. Perhaps he would see only a good friend and a 'sister' and she would feel the same about him. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!

His sigh was more like a growl as he leaned back on the bench, frustrated with the path his thoughts had taken. He turned them back towards his more recent past.

A couple weeks on the streets in London had taught him a lot, in particular how to hide and how to figure out when he was being followed. Agents that he now knew worked for IO—International Operations—had been tracking him pretty much since the day after he'd left King's Cross Station, and he'd successfully evaded them at every turn. When he finally confronted them, the next day they sent Nicole Callahan after him. She'd confronted him in turn and came at him with some sob story about getting to know a side of his mother's family that he'd never before had an opportunity to. She'd also spun an interesting tale of uncovering a conspiracy of abuse and corruption from within Project Genesis and using him as a mole.

She almost had him convinced, but then as she'd been leaving she brushed her hand through his hair and he felt a distinct _Veela-like_ pull towards her, one that he pushed past just as he had her attempts at psychic intrusion. That was all he needed to know she was playing him. But, he reasoned, there was no need to let her know that he knew that.

And so he'd gone along, joined Project Genesis, and grouped together with a bunch of other teens chosen for various reasons. Over the course of several months, they trained all of the kids that were part of the Project in the basics that was everything between the CIA, NSA, MI6, KGB and every Special Forces Group of every military in the world taught all their recruits. He began to suspect they were being trained as soldiers, but what kind he didn't have a clue about until their last night there. The night his teammate and friend Caitlin Fairchild manifested her _super powers_!

They called it the Gen Factor, and anyone with the Gen Factor was a GenActive. Harry and his teammates from Project Genesis were all GenActives. They were now Gen13. Supposedly there had been twelve other generations of GenActives before them, Gen12 actually being the parents of half the people on the team. Frankly, Harry didn't give a damn about the past, he was more concerned with the future by this point.

Project Genesis had very specific protocols in place for when the 'students' ultimately manifested their abilities. Protocols that basically involved gassing them, and then cryogenically freezing them until they could be properly brainwashed into loyal, obedient and controllable SPBs (Super Powered Beings). Needless to say, they did not agree to this and fought like hell to get away. Things got quite bloody, especially after another IO operative, one Colonel John Lynch, came with his own private army and tried to "rescue" them.

Nicole and her brother Mathew, aka Bliss and Threshold certainly didn't make their escape any easier. The only good thing to come out of it was that each of them manifested their powers when faced with the threat of the other two GenActives.

Caitlin Fairchild, a year older than him, and originally just as skinny, but with red hair and green eyes of her own, when they'd first met he'd thought for a moment that he'd just discovered his long lost sister, given the similarity of their appearance and her red hair. She was as smart as Hermione, possibly smarter, and as kind and friendly as he was. And then she manifested and her body went from a 5'3" waif to a 6'4" amazon! Literally, in addition to an augmentation to her appearance, her strength, speed, and durability were through the roof! As she proved before the night was over, she was tough enough to survive a grenade to the face, and strong enough to rip a tank to shreds!

Robert Lane, aka Burnout, though they called him Bobby most often, also manifested on his own. Unlike Kat, who gained physical might to rival every heavy hitter in the world, he underwent what has commonly been referred to as the Human Torch Phenomenon. Basically, he can generate plasma from every pore of his skin, which when exposed to air ignites as flames. At first he was more than a little hotheaded and wanted to basically burn away all the bad guys. When everyone on the team except for Kat was captured and pretty much tortured by Threshold, he quickly got a handle on his ego and fell in line.

Sarah Rainmaker was a Native American activist and descendant of Geronimo. She even lived on a Reservation and everything. And apparently, though none of them had a way to either verify or doubt her, she said she'd had her powers to control and influence the weather since she was a child. Powers which included conjuring up windstorms, shooting lightning from her hands, and even start a storm, though _very_ localized.

Roxanne 'Roxy' Spaulding, aka Freefall had actually been the last to manifest her powers, but she arguably had the coolest of them all. They'd been trying to get away in a stolen helicopter when Threshold had caught up to them and stopped their escape in its tracks. Roxy lost it for a bit and didn't even notice at first as their free fall from the crashed helicopter had come to a virtual halt. She could control gravity, or at least influence gravitational fields, making things _really_ heavy, or lighter than air, enabling her to pretty much fly and defy gravity and have a form of telekinesis and all that jazz. Now if she could only quit smoking.

Edmund 'Grunge' Chang was an easy person to understand. That was because he was a very simple minded individual. Not that he cared. What he did apparently care about, (besides women, food and surfing), was when Threshold was choking the life out of Roxy and he manifested right there, saving them from who knows what further horrors. His powers were a form of tactile metamorphosis, where he could take on the attributes or even atomic structure of any material he was in direct physical contact with. This also gave him a limited form of invulnerability, as they'd discovered when he'd been shot during their escape and his body had just— _absorbed_ —the bullets and he'd spat them back out.

Then there was him, Harry Potter. Despite being GenActive, he still had his magic and as far as he was able to tell, his powers were not affected by the other in the slightest, neither hindering nor enhancing his ability to use them at all. So in addition to being able to Apparate, a practiced Occlumens, a burgeoning Legilimens, and casting spells with both the wand he'd held since he was eleven years old and the Elder Wand of legend _at the same time_ , he could now also bend the fabric of time, allowing him to move at speeds that boggle the mind and also freeze or age into dust at his whim everything around him. He was still working on the subtleties, but the broad strokes were that he now had a form of super speed and a 'paralyzing touch'.

Since escaping the destruction of the Genesis Compound out in Death Valley, Nevada, the team had sort of broken apart. Although to be fair, it was more like they were taking a break, decompressing from the extreme stress of having basically been through a war. For Harry though, it was just one more battle in the ongoing war that was his life.

So while Caitlin went back to her home town, intending on visiting and getting caught up with her Aunt and Uncle who had raised her and her cousin who had been like her big sister growing up, and Sarah returned to her own family on the Reservation in Arizona, the other half of Gen13 decided to actually do something with their vacation. Roxy and Grunge were heading for Las Vegas. Bobby was road tripping it, driving in the van they had come across. Harry had no trouble spending some of the black bag funds he'd appropriated from IO, and neither did the rest of the team.

As for himself, Harry considered what had happened to him over the past few months. If he'd known _half_ the things he knew now when he and his friends had started their Horcrux hunt, things might have turned out different. No, he silently realized, they would still have turned out the same it just would have been resolved sooner and hopefully with less casualties in the end. That ultimately had helped in his decision to use this time of relative peace to prepare for the next battle rather than waste it on frivolous pursuits. And so he'd spent about a week hunting down the American version of Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic, finding out what it took to be an ICW Certified Hit-Wizard, the only occupation that was like being an Auror (which is what he'd planned on doing after graduating school) but less restrictive and international, and then studying up for the test. And now here he was, still a few days before he was due to meet up with the gang in Vegas, and he had nothing to do.

Maybe he could Apparate over to Vegas early, settle in at a hotel, lose a few coins at a casino or two, and wait for his Hit-Wizard License to arrive. That he passed was not in doubt, and while he by no means had gotten a perfect score, he had aced the practical, stunned his questioners during the oral (not literally of course), and probably gone a bit overboard on some of his answers in the written. He was just waiting for the piece of parchment stating it for others acknowledgment, but in his own mind, Harry was now a Hit-Wizard.

He needed a job.

Looking at the city across the water in a whole new light, Harry stood to his feet and spun around slowly, making sure no one was looking, before spinning a bit faster and Disapparating from Liberty Island with a soft crack.

 _To Be Continued..._


	2. Fairchild

Title: Gen 13 2/4

Author: Joshua

Rating: NC-17 (Due to Language, Violence, Adult Content)

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. Some spoilers from the Gen 13 #0 issue.

Summary: After escaping the Traveler in Oregon, the Team splits up to go their own ways. Caitlin goes home to visit with her family one last time. Unfortunately, it isn't the homecoming she was expecting.

 _Journal Entry:_

 _My name is Caitlin Fairchild_.

 _Up until a few months ago, I was just another co-ed at Princeton._

 _But that was until I became an intern at IO's_ Project Genesis _. The GOOD part of the job was that I actually made some friends while I was there. The BAD part was that we learned that we were all lab rats in some sort of super soldier experiment._

 _If it hadn't been for Harry—_

Caitlin hesitated in writing any more. She looked around at her fellow passengers on the bus for a moment and then back down at the journal she'd started. The redhead sighed and resumed writing.

 _If it hadn't been for HARRY POTTER, I don't know what would have happened. He kept us together, kept us focused, and using his newly developed powers of Time Manipulation, granting him a form of super speed, he rescued and evacuated all the others that were being held at Genesis by IO_

 _The rest of us were running around, half-cocked, full of ourselves and overconfident that because we now had superpowers, that somehow made us better than specially trained and experienced soldiers. Specifically those that were set to guard the lab rats—us—called Keepers. After we'd all but escaped by ourselves, we were found by a director of IO A man by the name of JOHN LYNCH. He wasn't happy with the project's operation or goals, and had come with an army of his own to shut it down._

 _I'd like to think we handled ourselves pretty well, but the truth of the matter is—we were lucky. Damn_ _Lucky_! _If Harry... Harry saved us. Came up with the plan, put us where we needed to be, and with his own powers, it was the edge we needed to not only survive THRESHOLD, but to out maneuver him so we could escape scot free. Still, we were in the middle of the desert, there were pretty much two armies having it out all around us, and only one of which actually wanted to help us in any way._

 _Afterward—after the fighting was over that is—we all agreed to stay together as a team to fight the people behind Project Genesis, but first we each wanted to take care of some personal business. Mister Lynch wasn't too keen on the idea, but we didn't give him much choice._

 _SARAH RAINMAKER went back to her reservation in Arizona, while the rest of us headed for the Pacific Northwest. As far away from the desert as possible, that was the joke we all kept making along the way. Mister Lynch warned us to be careful and gave us an address in California where we could reach him. I don't recognize the address or name of the city, and the maps I've looked at since don't show where it is. It may not even exist and this Lynch person could be drawing us into a trap. Harry says we can trust him though, and that seems to be good enough for most of us. I know it is for me._

 _I'm writing a separate journal for our 'superhero gig' as Grunge calls it. Let's just say that there was an incident with some lady calling herself the TRAVELLER and we split up outside of Portland._

 _ROXY SPAULDING was told her step-mom had moved to Las Vegas, so she and EDMUND "Grunge" CHANG went to go find her there. Burnout, BOBBY LANE, said he'd drive there and go to Arizona, where he'd pick up Sarah. They'd get Freefall and Grunge on the way back to California._

 _Meanwhile, our intrepid leader, by popular vote and a few strong arm tactics on my part, Harry disappeared to do his own thing. After the Traveller incident, he said he was going to see about getting some credentials of his own and then he'd pick me up and we'd all meet up at Lynch's safehouse together. I still have no idea what he meant by that, but for all I know he's actually planning on running us from Portland, Oregon down to this unknown city on the coast of California somewhere!_

 _Harry's fast, and he's no doubt powerful, but even I think that would be a bit much. I don't know. He may surprise me yet again. I think that is his super power, more than time manipulation, it's being a mystery to everyone around him, even his closest friends._

Fairchild sighed once again and closed the notebook journal and putting it away in her bag. Pulling her feet up on the seat with her and resting her chin on her knees, she looked wistfully out the window as the bus passed by a park with children playing happily. Looking out at the children playing reminds her of her own childhood, of the happy moments growing up with her aunt, uncle and cousin, Karen.

Musing to herself wistfully as the playground vanishes in the distance, Caitlin realizes that she misses the simple, quiet life of hearth and home. Compared to the 'adventures'—if one could call them that—she'd had so far, there was a certain allure to having a boring, uninteresting life where she stayed home and married her childhood sweetheart and had two point five kids with a twice mortgaged half-acre lot on a street where the houses were all identical save for the people living inside them. Pulling out the wedding photo she has of her cousin and her husband, Brad, she wonders, not for the first time, if she's really cut out for this life as a "superhero", and if she should be jealous of Karen, who did and has all of those things.

Snorting softly to herself, Caitlin put away the photo and rolled her eyes at her folly. She'd never exactly had a 'sweetheart' of her own in the first place. But perhaps, would it be too late to try for it now?

Images, memories of a man with a wild mane of dark hair and piercing green eyes behind round spectacles, entered her consciousness, and she couldn't fight the blush that rose to her cheeks. Harry was definitely superhero material, she knew that, and anyone could see it for themselves truly. So... maybe, just maybe, she could have both? A sweetheart that was a superhero?

Shaking her head, Caitlin pulled herself out of her fantasy life. Seeing that they were finally pulling into the bus station, she turned her attention toward more attractive pursuits, such as seeing her family once more.

 _Portland Bus Station_

"Look, Karen, I don't got all day to waste waitin' for your nerd cousin," Brad said angrily. He was a tall, muscle bound Nordic blond man, wearing a local gym shirt and sweat pants.

"Please, Brad," Karen begged, standing next to him, holding their infant son in her arms. Her purple floral sundress flapped in the breeze, molding to her body as she tried to keep her husband patient. "I promised Mom and Dad we'd pick up Caitlin while they got the Welcome Home party ready for her. She should be right— _There_!" She started suddenly once she spotted her red-haired cousin stepping off the bus. Waving, she called out, "Over here, Caitlin!"

"Karen?!" Caitlin cried out in amazed surprise. She'd heard that she and Brad had gotten married, even gone to the wedding, as a bridesmaid, but she didn't think she'd been gone long enough for her cousin to have had a child!

"About effing time," Brad mumbled as they met up with his wife's cousin.

"Wow! I can't believe it," the much taller redhead exclaimed as she came up on her blond cousin. "You're married and a _mother_ now! I can't believe so much has changed, I haven't even been gone a year!"

" _Me_?!" Karen said with surprise, "Just look at _you_! What've they been feeding you at Princeton—"

"Guess I'm just one of those late bloomers," Caitlin quickly interrupted. "Who would've ever figured, huh? But never mind that. Oh, come here! Let me give you both a hug!" She then dropped down and scooped both her cousins into her arms for a big hug.

"I'm so glad you're home!" Karen said. "Everybody just can't wait to see you again!"

"Lookin' good Caitlin," Brad chose that moment to interrupt, forcing the cousins apart. "Maybe I oughta be sendin' Karen here to college!"

"Cut it out, Brad," Caitlin admonished the man her cousin had married. Even now, she had no clue what Karen saw in this neanderthal. "Anyway, it is great to be home! Where are Aunt Sophie and Uncle Nate?"

"Where do you think?" Karen laughed, leading the way to the parking lot. "At home getting your Welcome Back party together! Everyone can't hardly wait to see you, Caitlin! Oh, I'm so excited!"

"Yay, look can I just drop you chicks off already? I've got better things to do with my day," Brad grumbled as they made their way to the car.

"Real charmer there, cuz," Caitlin whispered as she helped put her baby second cousin in his car seat.

"Don't worry," Karen rolled her eyes. Caitlin and Brad had never gotten along, different cliques was only the beginning. "You're staying with Mom and Dad, remember? You two will hardly see each other after this. All right, there we go, little man. All nice and secure. Caitlin, you don't mind sitting in the back with him, do you?"

"Of course not," she said conversationally, before whispering so only Karen could hear, "Thanks. I don't think I could stand being that close to Brad for an extended period of time." Her blond cousin just giggled and got into the front seat of the SUV as the redhead crawled into the back seat, her much longer legs forced to be drawn up tight in the confines of the vehicle. Caitlin was hyper-aware of her strength at the moment, making sure she didn't do anything that might cause an accident.

Luckily, fifteen minutes later, they were pulling into the driveway of Fairchild's childhood home and were fully unloaded less than a minute later, Brad pulling out just as they managed to get the doors shut.

"Real charmer, cuz," the GenActive repeated her earlier statement. Karen just rolled her eyes and ignored her.

"He's not too bad, most of the time," the blond replied, hoisting her son a bit higher on her hips. "And all bad habits and everything, I'm in love with him, and that's more than enough for me."

"Yeah," Caitlin agreed with a wistful smile, one face with green eyes and wind-swept black hair coming to mind. "I suppose it is."

"Anyway," Karen said as they approached the door, "I know it isn't exactly a surprise or anything, but..."

"SURPRISE!" she and the half dozen people in the house all screamed the moment the amazonian redhead was through the front door.

Caitlin was all smiles as she walked in to see the 'Welcome Home' banner haphazardly placed across the entryway and her family and Karen's closest friends—the closest thing Caitlin had to hometown friends—all gathered around a cake and snack tray in the dining room. She hugged her aunt and uncle—her parents since she was five or six years old basically—first and then made her rounds with everyone else present. To her mounting shock, Karen wasn't the only one with a 'little one' on her hips.

The party was, overall, equal parts everything she'd wanted when coming home, and everything she'd dreaded about coming home. Nobody could * _not_ * notice her considerable changes, but did their best to avoid mentioning it. Fairchild finally mentioned it herself and blamed it entirely on being a late bloomer and all the exercise and hearty food she'd been eating at the "Gen Project" she'd been selected for, stating only that it had been part ROTC program, part advanced cognitive development program, and all maximizing human potential kind of project.

The parts she'd enjoyed had to do with the strong sense of family, something she'd sorely missed over the months away from home, that she got from her aunt, uncle and cousin. As well as the sharing of stories of everything happening around town since she'd left for Princeton. It was Portland, OR, so mostly it was stuff about what changes had happened around the immediate neighborhood and a few construction projects that had been started and/or completed in the city proper.

The parts she hated though, well, that was of course where her family shared and/or reminded everyone with stories about _her_ , in high school, growing up, and on vacations and stuff. The worst part was when they started to ask her about what she'd been up to and had been happening to her since leaving for Princeton. She'd prepared the story about Project Genesis, reciting it to herself over and over in her head since leaving for Portland, but... Caitlin was not a good liar.

Mostly she tried to stick to stories about everything _before_ Project Genesis. At least it was all true and she could just recollect all of that without worry. Unfortunately, most of those stories consisted of her studying or talking about her classes and Professors, or ranting about her nightmare of a roommate. Not exactly riveting stuff. Especially as all of Karen's friends wanted to know about this secret and highly-selective Gen Project she'd been chosen for. She couldn't exactly tell anyone the truth about that, now could she?

After the third time of basically repeating her prepared story, they all seemed to get the hint and stopped asking about it directly. Though sometimes the conversation might drift back towards it, her aunt helped in deflecting the conversation back to safer topics. Caitlin had never been so grateful for her family.

The party finally began to wind down after a couple hours and most of the kids, who'd been left to play in the corner of the living room, were starting to nod off, so everyone left, giving Caitlin one final welcome home before departing. Leaving just Fairchild and her family alone.

"So," Aunt Sophie said in such a way that they all knew the 'elephant in the room' conversation was about to begin, "Caitlin. I would think that it is fair to say that quite a bit more happened to you over the past few months than you've already said. Care to catch us up, my dear?"

"Uh, well, it's actually just what I said," she shrugged sheepishly. "A late bloom growth spurt or something like that. I'm sure all the daily exercises they had us doing at the program didn't hurt in that."

"Uh huh," Karen rolled her eyes.

"Caitlin," her dark-haired, olive-skinned aunt admonished gently. "Since the Fourth Grade, I don't think I've ever heard you use a non-scientific term for almost anything. And now, all of a sudden, instead of calling it a late onset of pubescence or something else even more incomprehensible, you call it a 'late bloom growth spurt'? Kat, please, just tell us, we'd understand. We're just concerned because... well, quite clearly this sort of thing just isn't natural!"

Caitlin grimaced, finding herself caught between telling the truth to those she trusted above all others—even her new 'teammates'—and her family's safety. And just because armed men in suits and sunglasses weren't waiting for her at the bus stop, did not necessarily mean that they wouldn't be stopping by in the future at some point. The best thing she could do to protect her family was to lie to them and keep them from finding out the truth. Because if they did... well, she couldn't let that happen.

"I... I... I can't. I'm sorry!" she blurted out, heat rising in her cheeks. She was a terrible liar.

She feared that she'd just broken the last ties she had to the only family she'd ever known, expecting them all to scream and shout and accuse her of lying and not trusting them and who knows what else! From the expressions on her Uncle's and cousin's faces, she began to suspect that her fears weren't that far off, though thankfully her Aunt still bore a look of compassion rather than anger or frustration. In the end though, she wouldn't get to know what their exact reactions would have been at that moment, because in that moment her friend and teammate arrived... by appearing out of thin air with a loud pop of displaced air.

"Hi Kat!" Harry said, in a surprisingly convincing American accent. "Listen, you may want to take cover. We've got incoming. Hello Caitlin's Family! I'm Harry."

"Harry, what—?!" she started to ask, but the reasons became all too clear very shortly after.

An explosion ripped through the front door like it was balsa wood. Windows shattered as the all-too-familiar sound of machine gun fire tore through the front of the house, tearing up the walls and furniture, destroying everything in their path. Harry, moving as quick as she'd ever seen him, quickly relocated her family out of the way of the danger and then came back for her. She'd followed his advice and ducked down a fraction of a second before the door exploded, putting the biggest barrier she could—the couch—between herself and the source of the gunfire.

Moments after the initial breech, about the time Harry was running back to pull Caitlin to safety, the first of the Keepers burst through the destroyed front door. Seeing the threat, about the same moment they saw them, the two Gen Actives quickly dove for cover as the black armored specialists opened fire.

It was pure luck that nobody was hit in the first few seconds, but that mostly had to do with the targeting visors of the Keepers' armor shorting out on them, filling with static and displaying afterimages that had them shooting at 'ghosts' and hitting nothing but the walls. Harry was just (privately) glad that he'd managed to get a Confundus spell off in time before the gunfire started up.

"We need to get my family out of here!" Caitlin screamed at her teammate, trying to be heard over the noise of the weapons and house being destroyed.

"Can you hold them off for ten seconds?" Harry asked in reply, giving her a look.

She knew exactly what he was 'really' asking, could she survive on her own for that long. She merely met his look, giving one of her own in reply, and nodded. He nodded back and then to her eyes vanished in the blink of an eye. One by one, the rest of her family, her aunt, uncle and cousin, vanished in the same manner. Realizing that she needed to provide a distraction so none of the Keepers would go after them, Caitlin dove back for the couch, but instead of hiding behind it, she picked it up and threw it at the armored Black Ops soldiers, driving them out of the house—not to mention the couch and part of the front wall.

Unfortunately, this left her exposed, and her attack did not get all of the Keepers. One of those raised his rifle and aimed it in her general direction. Seeing this out of the corner of her eye, Fairchild started moving even before her mind had fully processed the input. Diving out of the way, she actually felt it as some of the bullets tore through her sundress, the parts that had been 'flowing' behind her as she went into her rolling dive. Knowing better than to stay still, or to try and reach cover in a civilian house of all places, she kept moving and even made her way around to the front, half hoping that some of the Keepers might take each other out in a crossfire. Supposedly, they were better trained than that, but one could hope.

Besides, most Keepers were really just hired mercenaries, and with that lot, there really wasn't a lot of loyalty or team unity.

Unfortunately, she couldn't count on that, and she still had another five seconds to fill. Moving as fast as she could make herself move, she ran straight at the nearest Keeper, punched him with a haymaker as she used his body to swing into position to make a run on the next nearest one, throwing the first through the air and somewhere out of sight, and hopefully out of range. The remaining Keepers were already moving to get a bead on her, but she wasn't staying still to let them.

Sliding the last couple feet, she took out the legs of her next target, picking his body up before it had fallen all the way to the ground and threw it at the farthest Keeper from her. She then turned her attention to the last few that were still standing and moved to attack. Three seconds left, had to make them count.

Bouncing off of the wall directly behind her, she flipped into a flying dragon kick, only to turn it into her own version of the Hurricane Kick from the popular fighting game, by hooking her foot around the back of the neck of the Keeper she was kicking and using that as leverage towards kicking the next, and then the next, and repeat until she'd kicked them all at least once. It was a move that even with her Gen-Factor enhanced musculature and strength, strained her body to the limit. She was mostly just moving and reacting and trying to do everything she could as fast as she could, no time to think and barely enough time to react. It was awkward and she truthfully only managed to land three solid blows, though she did manage to spin around and kick each of the remaining Keepers, their armor and the unpracticed nature of her kicks allowed for only glancing blows that did little to no real damage. As such, only two were taken down, one with a broken face-plate and cracked chest armor, the other actually having been literally kicked out of the house and possibly into the street. Or the trees. Or a neighbors house. It was hard to keep track.

The rest were merely knocked back at best, or inconvenienced at worst. Fortunately for Caitlin, she'd managed to buy Harry the time that he needed by this point, so when she ran out of nearby launching platforms, she settled with going from kicking to punching and from the last 'platform' she launched herself at one of the few Keepers that were still armed and landed on him with a double-punch to the gut, taking him out of the fight for good, at least until he got out of the hospital.

"How is it again that you were the _worst_ student in combat class?" Harry asked as he 'appeared' next to her. "I mean, I know you've been practicing and those powers of yours make up for a lot, but... blimey, Fairchild! I think you actually got all of them!"

"This isn't all of them," she remarked. "It isn't half of a standard squad, and they know they're after an SPB, after all. There should be another two dozen of these creeps slithering around."

"Yeah, they're, uh, taken care of," he remarked, having dropped his American accent once the fighting had really gotten started apparently. "Just this lot, and the rest outside. Which do you want?"

"Well, me and the boys here have gotten to know each other so well," she said, sarcasm set to full.

"Yeah, you should probably take to wearing your, uh _ahem_ , costume underneath your normal clothes from now on," Harry sheepishly adjusted his augmented glasses so they appeared 'fogged up' by the light. "Not that I'm one to judge or say what-for, but it will at least keep total strangers and the people trying to kill you from seeing your underwear and... other parts..."

Fairchild blinked and looked down at herself, and sighed in disappointment to see how her dress had basically been all but shredded in the fight so far, leaving her long super-model legs on full display as the skirt of her flowery sundress was nothing but ragged tatters, not to mention the tears along the back and down the sides of the dress, revealing she wasn't wearing much more than the rags, french-cut red lacy panties, and a black sports bra that was visibly straining to do its job, making it look more like a push-up bra instead. Glancing back up, she saw her friend and teammate was already in his own 'costume', a muscle-hugging velveteen-like material that was both friction-less and bullet-proof thanks to the unique kevlar-based lining, covering him from the collarbone to his wrists and ankles. It was primarily red across the body and shoulders and outer legs, the same shade of red that was part of Burnout's, Rainmaker's and Grunge's costumers, while the chest and main body had a 'tunic' lining and styling identical to Fairchild's costume, with the same shade of purple/violet. The inner piping of the legs were also the same violet shade. Rather than fingerless gloves and ankle boots like she wore, however, he had full armored gauntlets on both hands, and specially-made metallic boots that were glowing along their bottoms, as well as from two circular 'ports' that were quite clearly special-powered. That part was new, but she quickly deduced it was tech that he'd recently acquired so he wouldn't have to keep buying new shoes every day for the rest of his life because of how much wear and tear his powers put on his footwear. She imagined that he was actually wearing standard footwear, but the devices projected a forcefield that negated, or at least minimized the damage from the friction of him running at super speed.

"Nice shoes," she said, rather than reply to his unnecessary comment about her own attire.

"Thanks, got something for everybody when we see them next," he chuckled, clenching his fists and readying his stance. "I'll be sure to give you yours after this is over with."

"Appreciated," she replied, tensing in preparation for the fight to continue. "Where'd you put my family, by the way? And where _are_ the others?"

"Somewhere safe," he answered. "You just happened to be the first I visited. Finished my business already, heard about this just as it was wrapping up, decided to intervene. I'm off to help Roxy and Grunge after this, so unfortunately I won't be able to meet the folks. All the same, you might want to be on the first flight out of here by tonight. Sorry, Kat."

"It's OK," Caitlin briefly closed her eyes in regret. "I knew I was just coming here to say goodbye to them anyway. I can't ever see any of them again, lest I put them in danger."

"Oh, I've taken care of that," Harry informed her, and the Keepers and those watching through the Keepers' gear. "None of our enemies will ever be able to touch any of our living family again. They'll be completely untraceable. But knowing IO like we do, the longer you stay in town, the more and more likely it will be that they'll just burn the whole city to the ground looking for us, you in particular. Consequences be damned. So, once we take care of this lot, you can say your goodbyes, but you then need to leave—and visibly leave—the city as fast as possible."

The mercenaries were picking up their weapons and readying on their side of things, including getting all available backup. Harry briefly considered moving things outside, but the close quarters actually benefited the two GenActives more than the Keepers at the moment. Seeing as Caitlin had been right and there were over three-dozen armored soldiers surrounding them, only a handful were close enough to actually target the speedster and superhuman tank. They could handle a handful at a time, if they played their cards right.

"We're going to talk about this later," Fairchild told him.

"If we have time," he replied. "Remember, I'm off to help Freefall and Grunge after this."

All the Keepers cocked their guns, released safeties, and charged their plasma-rifles.

"Break over then," Harry remarked, before adding, "By the way, Fairchild, my code name isn't _Wizard_ anymore. It's _Thundercrack_!" Right before he vanished with a deafening crack of displaced air.

Using the distraction to full advantage, Fairchild ducked down and charged the nearest soldier, tackling him while taking him out of the fight for good. At the same instant, Harry—er, _Thundercrack_ was doing that disappearing/reappearing thing, _cracking_ in right behind one soldier, hitting him _fast_ across the back of the head, and then repeating with another. Unfortunately, none of the soldiers were just going to stand there and let themselves be attacked like this. Most of them were firing in short bursts, the ones Har—Thundercrack attacked for a bit longer as they went unconscious with their fingers still wrapped around the trigger, unleashing a whole hale of bullets into their own men.

Their reinforcements, however, quickly caught on to the two GenActives tactics and adapted accordingly, switching to non-lethal, so as not to kill themselves, and triggering their suits protective measures, ie an electromagnetic field running throughout the suits that would electrocute anybody dumb enough to grab them. Thundercrack only needed one example to learn his way around said defense, getting a mild shock, but moving fast enough that he wasn't hurt. He still managed to Disapparate away the moment it happened, rubbing his now numb hand.

Fairchild wasn't as bothered by the electric shocks, especially not after she picked up the remains of the table and started using it as an over-sized club to knock the soldiers around with. Taking that as cue, Harry quickly conjured, or more accurately transfigured some debris into a couple of his own weapons, specifically those that he'd specialized in back at Project Genesis; single-edged straight short swords, each only about 54 cm in length. He'd just made them on the spot, so he didn't have time to do much with them, but he did make sure that they were solid and sharp enough to at least get through the outermost layer of the soldiers armor, though possibly not _all_ the way through.

Speeding up to the point that he may as well have been invisible to both naked and electronic eyes he was going so fast, the GenActive Wizard tested out his toys at the first opportunity. The Keeper genuinely had no idea what hit him. Only that he'd been aiming for the speedster one second, and between that and the next he was suddenly under assault from a storm of knives and blade, cutting at him from what seemed like every direction at once! He tried to fight back, but his gun and other weapons were forcibly yanked from him as a couple points of the thousand and one knives drove in a little deeper to get them free. The next thing that he was sure about was that he had two _very sharp_ two-foot swords sticking out of his visor, the very tips of which were close enough to his eyeballs that he'd slice his eyelids in half if he so much as blinked. He didn't blink.

The Keeper right behind the one that had just gotten 'cut up', reached in the containment pack on his belt that he'd been instructed to use if they came across the "Gen 13 Speedster", which quite obviously they just had. By feel, he could tell that it was a grenade, and despite the target being so close, he didn't even hesitate as he activated the weapon and threw it right on top of the downed soldier in front of him. Only, it triggered before even getting close to the casualty.

Harry saw the grenade coming and briefly considered what to do. He went with the 'safe and easy' option, and reached out, grabbed the grenade, and 'froze' it in time, stopping its detonation in its tracks, so to speak. Taking a closer look at the weapon, he quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't your standard Frag or Flashbang grenade, or even any kind of gas or energy type either. Near as he could tell, just by looking at it, the whole thing was designed entirely around... a motion sensor?

A quick (and by quick, that meant taking less than a picosecond to complete) examination revealed that while the grenade was 'triggered' by motion, what it did was far more... simple. It contained a few hundred needles of a metal that was almost magnetically attracted, so to speak, to kinetic energy. If his super speed worked via metabolism or was just pure motion, he'd probably be sprayed with all those needles all over his body by now. Good thing that his powers worked via _literally_ stopping time. Or at least slowing it down to the point that it may as well be stopped. He went and put the grenade under the bad guys car.

That taken care of, he quickly returned to the fight, (after searching and removing all similar grenades from all the other Keepers and likewise putting said grenades under their own vehicles), and helped Fairchild. Not that she necessarily needed it, judging by how well she was handling things.

Every time they tried to shoot her, she'd throw something at them that would catapult them into (or more often _through_ ) the walls. Those brave (or stupid) enough to attempt hand-to-hand combat were usually used as the 'things' she threw at those shooting at her. The remainder, such as it was, were smart enough to at least use the SPB-subduing weapons they'd been given. Mostly those consisted of stun batons and 'energy' tools, just random bits of metal that glowed with some kind of Gen Factor disabling energy, supposedly.

'Appearing' at Fairchild's side, Thundercrack held up both gauntlet-covered hands on either side of him, immensely pleased with himself to have constructed holsters in the armored gloves that basically amounted to him casting spells with them, rather than having to hold onto his wands with his hands. It all added to the legend of Harry 'Thundercrack' Potter, Hit-Wizard. Once he had his 'wands' aimed appropriately, he rapid-fire cast the Expelliarmus charm at all those still carrying weapons. The jets of light shot out so quick that none of them knew what hit them, only that he'd 'pointed' at them, and they went flying as their weapons went in the opposite direction from them.

Seeing better tools beyond broken furniture debris and the occasional reckless soldier, Fairchild was quick to snap up a couple stun batons and used them to full effectiveness against her enemies. Taking his cue from her, Thundercrack likewise picked up a couple of the dropped weapons and armed himself before taking the fight to the Keepers. Things quickly devolved into a chaotic pattern of violence, as the young heroes reacted according to how they'd been trained to handle weapons and melee fighting, as did the Keepers, whom despite their greater experience, lacked the advantages of super strength and super speed.

Even if they blocked her attacks with the stun batons, Fairchild only needed three attacks at most to end the threat of her opponent. One strike to open their defenses, a second to stun them, and a final strike to knock them out. Thundercrack needed a few more hits, but it took him about the same amount of time per soldier.

And despite their losses, the Keepers kept pouring into the weakening structure of the suburban home.

"I thought you said you'd taken care of their backup!" Fairchild said to her teammate during a very brief lull in the fighting, as the Keepers had to climb over the fallen bodies of their comrades.

"I did," he answered, American accent back up. "This is the rest of the squad. The legion that they'd called in right before breaching, however, is currently halfway to Anchorage, and will probably be red-flagged for illegally trespassing in Canadian airspace. Also, for the next thirteen minutes and forty-six seconds, all nine-one-one calls from this neighborhood will be going to a suddenly very popular pizzeria in Queens, New York. Also, as I'm sure these guys have already noticed, all their radio transmissions are being squelched, both incoming and outgoing. I left their audio/video equipment alone, because I want the message of this fight to be received quite clearly all the way to the top levels of the IO."

"And what message... grr... might that be?" she growled as she blocked a heavy blow and then turned it around and fully disabled the Keeper.

"I'm nineteen, this July, you're twenty this coming September," he pointed out as the remaining twenty-five Keepers regrouped in a large ring around the two GenActives. "We've had the sum total of nine months of hardcore Special Teams training, the first six of which was just Basic Training to get us into shape, and we escaped from their Project Genesis facility only a month and a half ago. We also haven't declared ourselves as super villains, joined any kind of established superhero team or group, and anybody that we have killed can be clearly cited as self-defense."

"Yeah, and?" Fairchild grumbled, blowing her hair out of her face as she twirled her makeshift weapons in her hands.

Harry smirked and looked right into the lens of the nearest helmet cam. "I know that IO views us as an investment. They want controllable superhumans. Super soldiers. And until the cost of either putting us down or taking us in exceeds that which they put into making us in the first place, they aren't going to leave us alone. At the same time, I know that if we talk, they'll try and kill us just out of sheer spite. The message, my dear Kat, is that we just took out an entire squadron of fully armed and SPB equipped Keepers with less than a years training and less than two months of experience with our super powers. The longer it takes for them to take us down, the more time we have to improve and gain experience, making it even more difficult for them to take us down. So, after we're finished here, we're going to disappear... and become mercenaries."

"Wait, what?!" she screamed, turning away from the soldiers to stare incredulously at her teammate. Fortunately, said soldiers were likewise stunned by this declaration.

"So consider the benefits of hiring us, rather than chasing us down and trying to kill or control us so we lash out and eventually cost you more money than if you'd sponsored ten Project Genesis sites," he smirked and winked at the camera. "Also, all this was just window dressing. I wanted to make sure the message was given the appropriate weight."

"What... are you talking about?" the now very confused redhead questioned.

"I've been holding back all this time," he replied with a shrug, taking off his glasses. "Here, hold these if you please, Caitlin. Now, obviously, each and every one of Gen13 have different abilities. If you want to battle the troops head on, or massive destruction and collateral damage, you'll need Fairchild, Burnout or Grunge. Need massive devastation and elemental or energy attacks, need Burnout and Rainmaker. Need mobility and versatility, or even stealth, need me and Freefall. Together, we make an indispensable unit that make most world powers drool with envy. And make hardcore Black Ops units like these guys here, quake in their kevlar-lined undies and combat booties."

There was now a distinctive growling coming from the insulted soldiers, and most of them looked ready to try their hands at wringing Harry's neck barehanded. He beat them to it.

"Observe," he said, and then stopped time. He then proceeded, with time stopped, to strip, knock out, and restrain the remaining Keepers, plus all the disabled and injured and already unconscious ones as well. Objectively, he felt it took about half an hour at most, but the actual passage of time was about ten milliseconds, give or take.

Caitlin blinked—after the fact—and stared at all the bound and trussed up soldiers. She summed up the only logical reaction one could have with a very succinct response.

"Whoa," she said.

Harry clapped his armored hands together, as though brushing off some dust and pulled up the same helmet cam he'd been delivering his message to. "I got here soon enough that I saw the Keepers targeting Fairchild. I _could_ have prevented them from even breaching. Instead I isolated your team and allowed you all to view this message of mine. Leave us the fuck alone. We'll contact you if we really need the work. Until then, stay out of our lives, and we'll stay out of your business. If not... well, we'll see what becomes of us in say... a years time? We're capable of this after a month. What do you think we'll do to you in a year? Message over."

He then picked up and set off one of the Keepers EMP grenades, killing all the electronics in the immediate area.

"What was that?" Caitlin demanded after all the sparks from electronics dying ended, handing her friend back his glasses.

"Sorry, bit of a bluff there," he answered, switching back to his native accent. "I was raiding IO's HQ with Colonel Lynch and saw that they had an active operation going on both here, where you were, and in Vegas, where Grunge and Roxy are. I apparated in right before they had breached. Took care of their backup while I was hiding your family in the backyard tree house. Got anything to eat? I am starving!"

"And that bit about becoming mercenaries?!" she screeched, taking the time to try and fix her ragged dress. "Because that was _not_ what we discussed before going our separate ways."

"What else are we going to do?" he pointed out as he made his way toward the kitchen. "Work as temps in an office building? Part-time at a convenience store or warehouse job? We've got super powers, Kat. Why the bloody hell _wouldn't_ we use them? And why not make money, while we're at it?"

"Heroes for hire, basically?" she grumbled, giving up on the whole thing and finally just ripping the whole dress off, leaving her in her red lace panties and sports bra.

"Mercenaries do a lot more than just kill people and invade small countries," Harry pointed out. "Security details. Investigative work. Hostage Rescue. Recovery. I could go on, but you probably know more about it than I do already."

"What am I going to tell my family?" she asked.

With that, he pulled out the Elder Wand from his left gauntlet and tapped her on the forehead and then on her barely covered chest, right over her heart. "Tell them _Caitlin Fairchild's family lives at this address in Portland, Oregon, United States of America_ , and then say goodbye. There. Your family is protected, and nobody that you do not trust or tell this secret to, can know about your family. Not even me. Now, seriously, as soon as I finish eating here, I've got to hoof it to Vegas to help out Grunge and Roxy. Given the date, Bobby and Sarah are probably on their way to meet them, and knowing our luck..."

"Yeah," the semi-nude redhead nodded, rubbing the back of her head while blushing. How she kept getting into these situations was beyond her. "They'll probably be waiting with guns fully loaded, and we'll be hearing about the latest superhero brawl in downtown Las Vegas tomorrow all over the news. I'm, uh, I'm going to get changed and then I'll get my family back in here. Don't suppose you could help clean the place up a bit before you take off? Wouldn't exactly take you a lot of time, y'know."

"I'll see what I can do," he replied with a mysterious smirk as she walked off. Unable to help himself, his green eyes remained glued to her scantily clad ass as she walked toward and then up the stairs to where she'd put her luggage earlier. Fortunately, most of the damage had been limited to downstairs, and none of the carnage had reached the upstairs areas.

"I really need a girlfriend," Harry whimpered to himself while he cast a silent _Reparo_ with the still unsheathed Elder Wand. Magically, all the damage from the fight began to reverse itself and before Caitlin had come back down it was as though nothing at all had happened in the first place, save for the bound and unclothed soldiers and their weapons in a big pile in the middle of the living room.

After confirming that everything was in order, he dumped the lot of them (via portkey) in the local jail and pocketed all the weapons (for either personal use or reselling later on) into his bottomless mokeskin pouch, Harry finished his meal and spun on the spot, disapparating to Grunge and Roxy's location in Las Vegas, Nevada.

END 2/4.


	3. Thundercrack

Title: Gen 13 3/4

Author: Joshua

Rating: NC-17 (Due to Language, Violence, Adult Content)

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. No actual spoilers in this one, just character stea—borrowing and rewriting.

Summary: Harry is now a ICW Certified Hit-Wizard, and he's looking for his first job and to finish up some other business in the meantime.

Gen13 3/4 Continued:

 _New York City, NY_

Harry looked around as he appeared from behind a tree in the dead center of Central Park. Thankfully he hadn't landed in the pond/lake, just on the edge instead. It was the middle of the afternoon, so there were plenty of people milling about and going about their business. No sign of anything magical, supernatural, or even illegal going on. At least nothing that a newly certified Hitwizard of the ICW should take care of.

First order of business, he decided, get the lay of the land, and then see about making some contacts. He still hadn't gotten a hold of anyone in the Order, let alone any of his friends from school. It'd been nearly a year already, seeing that it was still early spring, not yet May in fact. He was sure that everyone had moved on to more important matters and assumed the same about him.

Oh, if they only knew.

Harry stopped walking, one step off the grass, the thought circling around in his head.

OK, first order of business was still to get the lay of the land, but second order of business was to Floo the Order and see how everyone was doing. Then he could start working on building contacts. Fortunately, he already knew where to find the magical areas of the island city as he'd had to get to them first before walking into the ICW to request a Hit-Wizard License. Bit of a hint; the ICW is no where near the UN buildings.

Making sure that he was out of the line of sight of any nearby cameras, he tapped into his new GenActive power and started 'jogging' along the paved paths on his way toward Greenwich Village, specifically Bleecker Street, along which was the portal to the magical underground, commonly called by American Wizards as the _Sanctum Forum_. It was just as impressive as Diagon Alley back in London, just a bit more spacious. It was also home to more than just wizards, as he'd seen all sorts of magical creatures, many walking around as vendors and customers themselves. Something that he'd never seen in Diagon Alley before.

It drove home, yet again, just how insanely prejudiced his people were. He began to have second thoughts about contacting the Order.

Maybe just the Weasleys, check on Ron and Ginny and Hermione.

Walking through the barrier, a graffiti covered wall at the back of an old and clearly abandoned park, Harry finally 'slowed down' so he was back to walking at normal speed, instead of faster than the eye could follow. Moments later, he came out in the magical section of Greenwich Village, and proceeded 'down' a set of spiral stairs that were straight out of an Escher drawing. After a twisting, turning, and even briefly chasing himself, walk through the entrance that only a magical could successfully navigate, he came out in the thoroughly protected and warded from all non-magical detection, Sanctum Forum, or New York City's magic market place.

First time he'd seen it, he'd been caught staring and gaping like a tourist. Even after having spent a few days in New York and even renting a flat in the area, sometimes the amazement still got to him. At least he'd stopped staring at everything with a doe-eyed stare of awe. Mostly.

The buildings were the same as those you could find elsewhere in Greenwich village, but that is where the similarity ended, as the decorations, the signs, what was put in windows, outside windows, on doors, even in the streets, it was all magical and to describe it with mere words would be a disservice to the wonder and majesty of it all. But he was through with sightseeing, it was time to get to work.

He made his way for the local pub, going by the very original name (note the sarcasm) the _Cabana Arcana_. He stopped by the fireplace to set up a Floo call for later on. If he were to make the call now, it would be the middle of the night in England and chances are nobody would answer, so he'd have to wait until after dawn in the UK. But while he waited for that, he could go about his third objective of the day, which was to start building contacts and making a name for himself, _as a Hit-Wizard_. Rather than as the Boy-Who-Lived.

"Who are you?" a tough looking wizard with several scars on his face and arms demanded the moment Harry sat down at the bar. A number of other shady customers glanced in their direction, most of them wearing a smirk or look of anticipation, telling Harry all he needed to know about this particular loudmouth.

"Name's Harry," he gave a two-fingered salute from the frame of his glasses. "And I'm just here for a drink right now. Waiting to make an international call is all." He'd been working on his American accent pretty much since being recruited to Project Genesis, finally making some headway in recent weeks so that he didn't have to make it sound so forced.

"Oh, who ya gonna call?" another drunken lout asked with a loud laugh. This one looked a lot less... world-weary than the first tough guy.

Harry eyeballed the laughing wizard, and sighed resignedly. "Cute," he commented. "One of the house brew, and a list of your imports, please?" he asked the barkeep. He'd learned the hard way that not everybody carried butterbeer in the States.

"Who are you calling cute, kid?!" the drunkard was shouting at him.

Harry glanced at him briefly out of the side of his eye, and then dropped an extra galleon on to the bar, saying, "I'll try to keep the damages to a minimum."

"Not to worry," the bartender replied. "It comes out of his tab anyway, but I'll start you one, just to be safe, stranger." He picked up the extra galleon separate from the payment of his drinks and put the lot into an old-style cash register, one that dealt only in coins, not in paper notes.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" loudmouth made to grab Harry by the shoulder, but he'd already 'accelerated' himself and was already moving before the hand ever touched him. He yanked the drunk moron down by his grabbed arm, pulled him over the bar and slammed his forehead down on the edge as quickly and briefly as he could, using a hold at the nape of the troublemaker's neck to gain superior leverage. Then he let him go and allowed him to drop bonelessly to the floor. Probably a bit excessive, but he wasn't in the mood for a bar brawl.

"Ow... wha... who... huh...?" the guy moaned from the floor, but it was clear to everyone watching he was not going to be getting back up any time soon.

"So, who did I just knock unconscious, anyway?" Harry asked the bartender.

"Him? Oh, he's Billy, the first born of one of the local lords. By that I mean, lords of magic, one of the council members of the New York chapter of the International Confederation of Warlocks. He's apparently trying to burn through his inheritance by drinking it away, when he isn't spending it on frivolous thrills and occasional trouble making on the mortal side of things. See anything you like?" He gestured to the list of imports Harry was reading through.

"Hm, I'll try one finger of your Butter Scotch, a bottle of your Butter Beer, and another of the house brew for later. And if you don't mind, could you tell me what they're all looking at?"

"I think they're just curious to see why you'd knock a guy out just for saying hello," the bartender replied as he poured out the glass of magically altered scotch whiskey, and a bottle of butterbeer.

"He was actually trying to distract me from butterfingers here," he gestured to the scarred wizard that had first spoken to him, "trying to pickpocket my wallet. And he's not as drunk as he looked, seeing as how he was aiming for the back of my neck and had his wand palmed in his other hand to hit me with a stunning curse by all appearances. I've got things to do, and getting hustled is not one of them." He downed the scotch a sip at a time, allowing the flavor to wash over him before letting it burn its way down his esophagus. "Good stuff."

"You know what they say about assumptions," the guy he'd pointed to growled, wand in hand.

Harry glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, dismissing him.

The guy smirked at the back of Harry's head and then in a flash, literally, cast a curse at the available target, the magic creating a blinding flash of light as a side effect. When everyone could see again, however, Harry was still sitting at the bar, still nursing his scotch and not looking the least bit ruffled. His assailant, however, was on the ground, passed out, his wand—still in his hand—snapped clean in half, and a harsh looking bruise forming on his cheek. Everyone stared and the whispers started flying.

Nobody could even begin to explain how what they just witnessed could have happened, but the facts remained. This... Harry, was not someone to mess with. Word quickly began to spread.

Within fifteen minutes, enough time for him to finish his scotch and bottle of butterbeer, Harry had another stranger, in a dark full-bodied cloak with the hood up, sitting down beside him. Without a word being said, the bartender put a rather unique drink down in front of the cloaked figure, and everyone that had been staring at the new tough guy in town very quickly returned to their own business and avoided even glancing in the cloak's general direction.

The stranger was polite enough to allow Harry to finish his bottle before speaking.

"So, what can I do for you?" the new Hitwizard asked first.

"What makes you think that I need anything from you?" the man (definitely a man) replied in kind.

"Do you want me to actually list my observations and deductions, or should I reply with a vague spycraft response from a cheesy novel?" Harry shot back, reaching for his drink but not touching it just yet.

"Touché," the cloaked man said.

After a full minute of silence, Harry lost patience, and prompted, "So?"

"Impatient, are we?" came the amused query.

He briefly considered his response, before saying, "Hm... I'd say more anxious than anything. I do have some long distance calls to make later on, but until then, I'm just waiting. I'm hoping to do more than just drink and listen to whispered conversations while I'm waiting."

"Hence you're little... display earlier?" the cloaked man inquired.

"Well, I admit, that was part of my reason for doing it in such a public manner," Harry confessed. "Another part was to get the attention of people like you. But mostly it was because I was telling the truth. I'm not here to get hustled and I'd rather scare off pickpockets with a spot of violence than keep having to go to the bank because I got a bit careless."

"A spot of violence, eh?"

Harry hid the wince at his slip. Sure, he'd stuck to his American accent, but a bit of slang here and there occasionally slipped through and some times that could be more telling than the way one pronounced certain words via accents or dialects.

"A simple demonstration," he said.

"I know who you are," the man said, quieter, "Harry Potter."

"I would hope so," he said, maintaining his accent. "If you didn't, I would be forced to turn you down."

"You don't even know what it is that I am here to speak with you about."

"I'm a Hitwizard," he stated. "True, I'm new to the job, but we've all got to start somewhere. And if you hadn't known who I was before approaching me, I'd probably have to turn you in right after our conversation was over. Because you'd be wasting my time, and most likely would be a criminal."

"I still could be," the cloaked man pointed out.

"True," Harry admitted. "But a well-connected criminal. And that is what I'm after at the moment; connections. Contacts. And maybe a bit of a reputation beyond blind luck as a baby."

"Hm, fair point. And you're not officially a Hit-Wizard yet, by the way," he said. "Although it should come as no surprise to you, that you passed your exams with flying colors, your certification won't officially be valid for the next three to six weeks. Until your license comes through."

"I can't take any 'official' Hitwizard 'jobs'," Harry said, making air quotes with his fingers, "until my license comes through. But I'm still a Hitwizard now, and it doesn't require a license to make friends and earn a bit of a reputation, now does it?"

"True," he acknowledged. "And as it would just so happen, I think I can help you out with some of that."

"Oh?" Harry finally pulled the brew to him and took a sip.

"I... well, we," he said, "can help you out with getting your license and taking care of any remaining red tape to remove any lingering doubts as to your status. We just need your... help with something. Of course, it pays as well, in more than just favors."

"I'm listening," Harry said, taking another sip.

"We need someone... retrieved," the man finally took a swig of his own unique drink, careful not to allow any peek under the hood of his cloak. "Alive, of course. A simple bounty hunting job, as it were. His name is Jacen Borne. No, that really is his name. He's a fugitive, the bastard son of _the_ Andrew Borne, the fifth lord of magic of New York. His crimes have mostly been trespass and thievery, seeing as he was never acknowledged by his father, but last year something changed. He started... killing. Non-humans at first. Then mortals. And then his father's mistress of the time. He avoided capture for months, until he killed the witch, and his father hired a whole team of Hit-Wizards to capture him. He escaped just this past week, and we think he's killing again. We want you to find him and bring him in, alive. If you do, you'll have your license before the end of the week and a substantial reward."

Harry was silent, listening and drinking. The silence slowly grew until he finished his drink. Putting it down, he allowed the bartender to collect the glass and walk away before stating, "You're his brother, aren't you?"

The startled shift beneath the cloak was enough to tell him that he was right, despite there being no verbal confirmation or denial.

"Well, Mister Borne," Harry sighed. "I'm going to need everything that you've got on your brother and his past actions. And whether your father knows about this or not, I want my license done regardless of the state your brother is in when I... retrieve him. If he's alive and you're satisfied with his condition, go ahead and pay me, deposit it into my account with the Gnomes, _*not*_ the goblins. If not, feel free to keep your money, but this is a favor for a favor. I can find your brother, no problem. In exchange for that, you'll be getting me my license, yes? As a favor?"

"Of-of c-course," the son of the Borne Lord stammered. "It-it will be done."

"Good," Harry said. "Now get me that file and I'll have your brother in shackles at the local Arrow office soon after. Unless you'd like me to take him straight to your home?"

"No!" he quickly lowered his voice. "No. The, the local precinct is fine. Just, uh just be sure to hold on to him until someone from the lord's house comes to claim him. If left to the Arrows, he'll either escape or be killed before the sun sets."

"I surmise that all of your troubles would have been avoided if someone of the lord's house actually had claimed him," Harry offered as a parting shot as the lord's son got up and left.

"Do you know who that was?" the bartender asked in an overly hushed whisper as he came back with another of the house brew for Harry.

"Yes," he answered, despite only having a vague clue about his new employer's identity. "Someone who thinks he can swim with the sharks, after swimming with dolphins. Where is Borne's bastard hiding out?"

"Him? What do you want with that psycho?" the bartender actually shivered, much the same way the folks in England used to about Voldemort, just not as intense.

"I want to offer him my protection," Harry answered truthfully. "Apparently he's got an insane number of Hit-Wizards gunning for him, all hired by his quote/unquote 'father'. I'm looking to even up his chances."

"Heh, you'll need a few more fights on your hands before anybody will think you're tough enough to handle something like that," the Mystic Arcane bartender laughed.

"Well," he glanced at the clock, "I've got about six hours to kill before I can make my call anyway. Any suggestions as to where I might get in a fight?"

The bartender laughed again, but slowly trailed off when he realized, "Wait, you're serious?"

Harry just grinned at him.

A quarter of an hour later, the GenActive Speedster was standing just outside a ring, located in an underground section of the sewers below Greenwich Village. It was a fight club, of sorts. What made it magicals-only was because some of the opponents weren't exactly human standard. Trolls, part-giants, part-elves, goblins, and even a few mortals that were in the Know. Magical artifacts, like gloves, belts or boots were allowed, but no wands or other magic foci were. No 'obvious' weapons either.

This was Harry's first fight, and he'd only gotten to the place ten minutes ago!

He'd watched a couple, just to figure out what was going on. Then it was just a matter of finding the guys in charge and 'signing up' for a few fights, betting on himself of course. Next thing he knew, he had his shirt off and was being pushed to the edge of the ring while a lumbering troll approached from the other side.

Harry found himself suddenly grateful for the daily combat drills he'd done at Project Genesis.

At a signal from the wizard playing referee, both combatants stepped into the ring at the same time, and then the new Hit-Wizard felt the ward go up around them, keeping them from leaving until the fight was truly done and over with. The troll, named Stonecrusher, didn't hesitate and charged forward to begin the fight.

Unfortunately, Fairchild was the strong one, so Harry knew he wouldn't be using brute force in this. And Stonecrusher seemed to have forgotten his club, so levitating it over his head to knock him out wasn't going to work either. Not that he could anyway, seeing as he'd left all his wands outside the ring and he did not have any enchanted gear or anything of the like. Revealing his Gen Factor was not an option, period. Which left him with coming up with something... new.

"This ought to be fun," Harry sarcastically remarked to himself.

Stonecrusher reared back and struck with a surprisingly fast punch, aimed at Harry's torso. But then again, the troll being so big and him being so small, it may have been aiming at his head. He saw it coming, and for an instant it was like a strobe light, stopping and starting again, telling the GenActive that he was tapping into his Gen Factor, intentional or not. So, moving slow enough that he wouldn't vanish, but still as fast as necessary, Harry rolled forward and slid under the troll's legs. He got to his feet and danced back out of the larger being's range.

Between bounces, as he tried to stay light on his feet, he kept up the same strobe-burst of super speed. It wasn't so he could cheat, but so he could actually have enough time to think of something!

Threshold and training aside, most of the fights that Harry had gotten into over the years were resolved with wands and magic. Or through sheer dumb luck and good timing and the occasional burst of insight. As a matter of fact, of the three of them, only _Hermione_ had ever thrown a punch!

No matter how much training he'd accomplished, not even Project Genesis could prepare someone for a cage match with a troll! Well, at least it wasn't a Mountain Troll. If it were, its stench alone probably could have won the fight for it, forcing Harry to either pass out, or try and Disapparate out of the ring to get away... Wait a minute! At no point did _anybody_ tell him the rules forbid him from Apparating _inside_ the ring!

By this point, Stonecrusher had recovered from its failed lunge and was charging again, this time leading with a kick. Harry danced and hopped a bit, faking going both ways before going on the troll's left side, narrowly ducking under its leg as it adjusted its front kick to a roundhouse. Unfortunately, it recovered much quicker this time and before the wizard could get away again, the troll came back with another punch, looking to drive him into the filthy pavement. Fortunately, he already had his plan and was ready to use it immediately.

Harry vanished with a soft crack, which was twinned from right behind and above Stonecrusher's head. Taking full advantage, he punched at the bald beast's crown as hard as he could, taking care not to injure himself in the process. It got the pale-gray-skinned fighter's attention, but apparently the teenager didn't weigh as much as a Mountain Troll's club, so that was pretty much all it did. He disapparated again, reappearing on the other side of the ring, but still inside its boundaries.

At this point, he was fairly certain that his tactic would continue to work, but not without a sound strategy. Getting around and attacking from the troll's blind spots was good and all, but it wouldn't do him a lick of good if he couldn't do lasting damage. He was the fast one, he reminded himself, not the strong one. So how does being faster give me an advantage?

Stonecrusher shook its head, feeling a very slight bruise from where it had been hit. Rubbing the spot, the troll turned to face its opponent, a rumbling growl erupting from deep within its chest. Clenching its fists tight, the troll unleashed an earth shaking roar and used its much longer arms to full effect, swinging both at Harry, despite still being a few feet away from even being close to hitting him. He used the extra time to his advantage, speeding up to the point where the beast was a virtual statue and the screaming crowd a still-life portrait in the background. He didn't move, still needing to keep his Gen Factor powers a secret. Instead, he thought and planned and tried to work out a way to win this fight.

First step in any fight, disorient or confuse the opponent while avoiding the same yourself. Then, limit the opponent's mobility, allowing for more openings and less attacks to avoid. After that, start cutting into their defenses and either do some real damage or knock them out. Past that comes the decision on how to end the fight. Before all that is the basics of any fight; doesn't matter how hard you hit, if you can't hit first, you can't win. Because if one hit won't do the trick then a dozen or more usually will.

He grinned, as the revelation filtered through his consciousness. _That_ was how he'd win. He was the fastest there was, and yeah, maybe he couldn't hit the troll hard enough for it to feel it, but he could certainly hit fast enough that it eventually would! He slowed back down and finally moved from his 'corner' spot in the ring.

Turns out, he'd slowed down too much and Stonecrusher managed to wing him as he was streaking past, sending the young wizard cartwheeling end over end until he crashed—quite painfully—into the ward surrounding the ring. This was one of the shielding wards, which after a brief shock—the equivalent of a prank lightning spell—dropped him smoking to the floor of the ring. Taking full advantage of the opportunity, Stonecrusher raised both fists and made to smash the young human through the floor. Another twin crack echoed amidst the cheers of the crowd, signaling Harry's successful escape.

No longer underestimating this opponent, Harry went on the offensive.

Apparating above the troll, he punched its right ear before apparating to the other side and doing the same to the left ear and disapparating to the floor. Stonecrusher lashed out, but he managed to get away before getting hit. A couple more rounds of apparating punches and disapparating out of danger and the troll was suddenly feeling a bit dizzy, while Harry's fists were starting to feel a bit sore.

The troll's skin was just too thick. So, jumping back as he spun to apparate one more time, he tried a flying kick instead, this time to the back of the head rather than around the ears. Stonecrusher actually dropped to its knees and looked more than a bit punch-drunk by this point. Step one, accomplished. Now, on to step two; take out its mobility.

He rapidly apparated back and forth between up around Stonecrusher's head and its legs on both sides. Keeping in mind his revelation about hitting a lot rather than just hitting hard, he had no hesitation in utilizing his Gen Factor power to his full advantage. Apparating in a crouch down by the monster's left leg, Harry employed his super speed so that if he were to actually move from that spot, it would look as though he'd vanished, maybe with an afterimage that stuck on people's retinas for a few extra seconds. As it was, he stayed down in a crouch, moving only his leg as he did a full leg-sweep-kick straight to the back of the troll's shin. As soon as he hit the gastrocnemius muscle of the back shin, he wound back up and hit the exact same spot. It was like Stonecrusher the troll was his new training dummy that he spent _hours_ practicing kicks with. He must've hit the spot on the back of the shin almost a hundred times before he saw the muscle finally clench up, a sign of it cramping and making it impossible to walk on.

Once he saw that sign, he slowed back down to normal speed and unleashed one final kick, this one to the back of the thigh, just above the knee. It gave the illusion of one super hard hit from him to the crowd, one that successfully swept out the troll's leg. Another twin-crack of apparition and he was on Stonecrusher's other side, speeding up and repeating with the other leg, only slowing down to hit the thigh at normal speed when he saw the gastrocnemius muscle clench.

With both legs crippled, all Stonecrusher the troll could do was cry out in pain as it toppled to its knees. Step two, done. Now came the extremely hard part.

Harry appeared amidst a resounding crack of displaced air above the troll's head. He did a quick spin kick, breaking the beast's nose. He then disappeared and reappeared half a foot further up and to the right, already in the midst of another roundhouse kick to its temple. An eye blink later, he was on the other side and kicking the troll's head back the other way around. Another twin crack after that had him above and behind the inhuman skull, driving the full force of his weight into the nape of Stonecrusher's neck with his knee. In a blurring move, made so mostly because he was actively using his super speed at this point, he drove his knee repeatedly into the back of his opponent's head, having to scramble up and hold on after each blow was delivered, but he wasn't going to stop until the thing finally went down for the count. Which it finally did, after the twentieth or so knee to the back of the head.

Step three, and fight, finished.

Stonecrusher started to fall forward, already unconscious, outside of the ring given that the wards went down the same moment one of the fighters did. Not about to ride _this_ troll down, and grateful that at least this time he didn't have to wipe troll bogeys off his wand, Harry disapparated from the creature's back and half an instant later, there was a resounding explosion of sound as he reappeared in the exact center of the ring, a rush of air flowing out from that point. A thunder clap that was loud enough to drown out even the crowd of the fight club. Once most of them got over the surprise, the cheers went up again, mixed amidst chants for 'Thunder Crack' Harry.

He participated in another two fights, both of them human fortunately. One a newcomer like him, the other an experienced fighter with pretty decent skills. It was fairly close, that second fight, but he still lost. But only because he couldn't risk revealing his power, and that guy had enough experience fighting that he knew what was and wasn't within the realm of human possibility when it came to speed. So he threw the last part of that fight, but in the end he got what he needed out of the whole endeavor. A reputation _not_ based on the Boy-Who-Lived legend. After that, he dropped out, collected his winnings and went back to the bar to rest.

Fortunately, for the rest of the evening Harry was left alone to mind his own business. When the time came, he went ahead and made his Floo Call. Deciding to bite the bullet, he decided to start with the Order, which meant calling the Weasley's, seeing as he didn't have the Floo address for anyone else in the Order, and hopefully they could tell him how Hermione and his other friends were doing in the near-year since they'd last seen each other.

When his head finally stopped spinning (literally since the Floo sent whatever was being Floo'ed through a non-space of fireplaces like a bullet out a long-barrel) he found himself (or rather just his head) in the Weasley kitchen. The empty Weasley kitchen. The empty Weasley kitchen with absolutely no sounds or signs of occupation anywhere within sight despite the morning light shining in through the windows.

He shouted out "Hello!" a few times, calling out as loud as he could, but nobody came running, or made any indication of hearing him at all. More than a little concerned about this, he pulled his head back and made another quick call to Hogwarts. It was during the school year, still in the midst of spring. It wasn't even close to time for Final Exams, so _somebody_ should be available.

To his pleasant surprise, he found himself (his head actually) appearing in the Headmaster's office. A Headmaster's office that just so happened to contain Professor McGonagall sitting behind the large desk as the acting (or actual, he couldn't be sure) Headmistress of the school, and a large collection of wizards and witches that he recognized as the Order of the Phoenix. The current collection just so happened to include the very people he'd been calling; the Weasley's. Or... what was left of them.

"Hey everybody!" he called out when the current conversation reached a lull point. "Miss me?"

 _To Be Continued…?_


	4. Lost Leading the Lost

Gen 13 1/4: Lost Leading The Lost

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. Spoilers for "Gen13 ½" in the Wildstorm Rarities collection, original story by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi.

Summary: In the days immediately following their escape from Project Genesis, the newly forged Gen13 come across their first encounter with what will be their new life, for the rest of their lives.

Story:

They were running.

They'd been running for a week now. Five days and ten hours and twenty-nine minutes to be specific about it. Ever since Harry and the mysterious Colonel Lynch had had their argument. The rest were still a bit overwhelmed, or so far in over their heads that they'd accept orders from the first competent leader that reared his, or her, head. Harry, on the other hand, was more than a bit experienced with older and 'wiser' men with a chip on their shoulders turning kids into their weapons of redemption.

Lynch wanted to rescue them, stop the experiments, let them keep their normal lives, and even maybe help them save people and other stuff. Harry was fine with that. He just wanted it on _their_ terms, not his.

So, after escaping Death Valley and the Project Genesis Compound where they'd been transformed into super-powered-beings, Harry talked Lynch down from 'forcing them into protective custody' to 'laying low for a while' and also allowed them the choice on whether they would work with him, or not. He gave them a week, and if he didn't hear from them, then he'd assume that they did not want to work with him and while he'd do what he could to keep them out of IO's hands, it wasn't as much as he'd be able to do with them directly. Lynch had made that very clear.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view, he'd given them a _full_ week to decide, so they still had two days, if they were going to bother with it at all. Harry was still heavily _against_ working with the military man. Caitlin, aka Fairchild, on the other hand, had a favorable impression of the man that had apparently worked with her father at some point, and was hoping to convince everyone to give Lynch a chance. Sarah and Bobby, aka Rainmaker and Burnout, were siding with Harry, at least insofar as an alliance with Lynch. Roxy and Eddie, aka Freefall and Grunge, had both vocally abstained, but everyone knew they'd side with Fairchild in a heartbeat.

They got dropped off out of state and then left to their own devices, at Harry's insistence. There was quite a big argument about it, seeing as they had been escaping thus far in a supersonic military jet up to that point. Until said jet explode ten seconds after leaving them on the ground, that is.

Shortly after, they came across a minivan big enough for the lot of them, which wasn't locked, and had enough gas in it to get them across the next state border at least. And, more importantly, didn't have any toys in the back. Neither Fairchild nor Harry were about to leave a soccer mom—with kids—without her wheels.

They were now somewhere in Oregon. Sarah, rather than join them on their trip north, had taken off in a completely different direction, saying that she was going home to her Reservation. She gave each of them a hug goodbye, but nevertheless left them shortly after they'd procured their means of transportation. So it was just the five of them now; 'Wizard', 'Fairchild', 'Freefall', Grunge and 'Burnout'.

Harry was really starting to regret the 'code name' he'd been labeled with, as it was starting to sound racist every time Roxy or Grunge called his name. Before, at least, it had been something of a joke on his apparent intelligence and ability to get things done. Now, out in the real world... Well, he _really was_ a wizard, so calling him that all the time was... well, it felt the same, to him, as when the Dursleys used to call him a freak.

"I really don't think this is Milwaukie, Caitlin," Bobby pointed out, as he kept glancing between the road signs they were passing and the unfolded map in his hands.

"Trust me, Bobby, I'm a Princeton Honor Student, I know my way around," the redhead driver replied just as pointedly. "Besides, I used to waitress up here in the Portland area. We're not lost."

"You're a Princeton _drop-out_ , Caitlin," the blond plasma-user argued. "And I'm telling you; we're lost!"

"Dudes!" Grunge belched from the middle seat he was sharing with Roxy, and most of the snack food. "We don't even know where we're _goin'_. How can we be lost?"

"We're going as far from that crazy Doc-Frankenstein-Meets-The-CIA secret compound as we can get, Grunge," Roxy explained for her 'sort-of' boyfriend. "But it seems little miss perfect has gotten us lost. Right Harry?"

"We're. Not. Lost," Caitlin grated out through clenched teeth.

Harry, who was spread out across the back seat with all of the pillows and blankets they'd accumulated on this road trip so far, and trying to get some much needed rest, raised his head up just enough to say with a _very_ thick accent, "I'm from Surrey, England, Rox. That's Southern England to you Yanks. How the Bluddie 'Ell should I know if we're lost or not. Sides, if _we_ don't rightly know where we're at, then _they_ don't bloody well know where we're at then. Now let me sleep!"

"See?" Caitlin smirked triumphantly. "We're not lost."

Fifteen minutes later, they finally came to signs of civilization. Apparently they'd been on the back roads and had finally come across a town. Caitlin had finally had enough, as for the past ten minutes, (he'd waited the obligatory five minutes for Harry to go to sleep), Bobby had not stopped berating her about getting them lost.

"Look, I'll pull over at that gas station. You can ask the proprietor if this is Milwaukie, all right?" she said with a long-suffering sigh.

"Good," he agreed, "The IO Probably has people after us. We can't afford to be lost."

Pulling in, Caitlin growled out one final time, "I said we're not lost."

"Sure, Caitlin. Whatever you say," Bobby said sarcastically as he jumped out of the van.

"Whoa! Pit-Stop!" Grunge exclaimed as the pulled into the gas station. "Mini-mart, here I come!"

"Yo, Grunge," Roxy called after him as he'd already hopped out of the van, "Try to get something other than donuts and cookies this time, OK?"

"Turning health-conscious, Roxy?" Caitlin asked sarcastically.

"Just making sure he remembers the potato chips, is all," she cheekily replied.

Turning in her seat before getting out herself, she shoved at the body laying prone across the entire backseat, saying, "C'mon Wizard! Pit-stop. Take care of your business, and if you want a snack refill, now's the time. Or, stay there and sleep, whatever."

She got out and closed the door behind her. As she turned around from that task, she saw Harry standing practically right in front of her, leaning up against the side of the van. "Gah!" Freefall nearly screamed. "Don't do that! Besides, I thought you and Kat were all about us being, y'know... discreet with our powers?"

"I move faster than the eye or any cameras can track," he pointed out. "Whereas you manipulate gravity, Bobby creates fires, and Grunge turns into a golem or robot version of himself depending on whatever material he's touching at the time. Kat is invulnerable and all around superhuman. Of that list of abilities, which of them are less likely to get noticed in public and cause a scene?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't need a friggin' lecture," she turned and actually walked away from the van and the mini-mart, turning to follow Caitlin instead.

Who actually appeared to be walking into town for some reason.

"I'll be right back," the redhead called back over her shoulder. "I've got a little errand to run."

Following behind her, Roxy couldn't help with the snark, "What's the matter? Gas station restroom not clean enough for you?"

Harry watched the two young women walk off, and then glanced over to where the other two guys of his group had headed. Taking another quick look around to make sure there weren't any cameras on him, he pulled out his wand and did a quick scan for any other magicals in the area. Thankfully, he didn't pick up any trace of wizards or wanded magic use. There were some magical creatures in the area, but that was about it, thankfully. American gnomes and things like that.

Deciding that he wasn't interested in either picking out junk food, nor in trailing after Kat like a lost puppy, Harry wandered off on his own, intent on finding something either to do, or at least take his mind off of the turmoil he was currently going through.

The place they'd stopped at was one of those tiny little suburbs where most everything interesting or worthwhile was within a mile of the interstate, if not right off the exit, and everything else was housing development and back roads. Other than the gas station, he could see a convenience store, a handful of restaurants, a bank, a body shop, and a chain hotel. Past the buildings, there was nothing but trees and roads that went off into said trees, behind which he would guess were suburban housing.

Seeing Kat and Roxy head across the street toward the restaurants, and more specifically one of those blue street-corner public mailboxes, Harry turned and went further down the street toward the bank and the ice cream place just past it. It probably wouldn't be anywhere as good as Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, but it had been far too long since he'd allowed himself the cold and creamy treat.

Meanwhile, Bobby was inside the gas station, getting directions from the attendant there.

"...on Campbell for fifteen miles. Turn north onto the interstate. Go about three hours..." he was saying when the blond firestarter interrupted.

'Wait! You're saying we're _three hours_ from Milwaukie?" Bobby confirmed.

"Sure," the man behind the counter shrugged. "Once you reach the interstate that is..."

"I _knew_ it!" Bobby crowed triumphantly, turning to race out of the building. "Thank you sir!"

"Hey, later dude!" Grunge called after his teammate, still collecting and perusing his snackage selection. Thus he never heard Bobby's comment to himself about, "This'll _prove_ that _I_ should be leading the team. Caitlin's bright, but she doesn't have the necessary command skills. And Harry doesn't want to do anything in the first place, let alone lead the team."

Outside and across the street, Roxy had caught up with her redheaded teammate just as she was stuffing an envelope and sealing it up. " _This_ is your errand?" the bi-color-haired girl scoffed. "Mailing a _letter_?"

Sighing, the amazonian young woman tried to explain herself. "It's a check to pay for the van we took. Roxy, we can't let our situation make us _criminals_."

"A check? Since when did you get the deep pockets?" the punk girl demanded.

"Actually, it's drawn on Ivana's bank account," Caitlin explained. "I accessed her codes while we were still at the Compound."

"You're making the _Spy Queen_ pay for the van? Sweet trick!" Roxy grinned. "I think I'm gonna _like_ being on the run with you, Caitlin."

At the same time, down the alley between the bank and the body shop, there was a sudden and violent explosion of fiery vermilion lightning in the middle of the air. It was there and gone in a flash, much like lightning or an explosion, only instead of leaving behind raw destruction, it left behind a woman in high tech armor, who quickly got to her feet. Scowling at her surroundings, she said to herself, "Hmm... Tracking indicated this was where and when Langston ported—but sensors are reading a blank. Damn him! He must've _triple-shifted_ to increase the variables."

A nearby police officer drew his sidearm and shouted out, "I don't know where you came from lady, but, uh— _Freeze_!"

Bobby, in the middle of racing across the street when the stranger ported in, turned and exclaimed, "What in the...?!" He turned and watched as the woman in... _purple_?... battle armor got to her feet and faced the policeman that had pointed his weapon at her.

It simultaneously happened in slow motion and very, _very_ quickly. The woman turned to glare at the police officer and then shot at him with a blast from her wrist-mounted ray gun. "You with the weapon—Back Off!" she ordered even as she fired. "I've got no time to engage hostile primitives!"

 _ **SKAASH! SH-ZAAK!**_

Fortunately—though whether intentionally or not it was hard to say—she missed the police officer as he narrowly ducked out of the way with an exclaimed, "Yow!" She did, unfortunately, hit the wall directly behind him and while it didn't fully penetrate, it caused enough structural damage that quite a bit of masonry was now falling to crush the poor public protector.

On the plus side, Bobby saw all of this going down and quickly came to some conclusions of his own.

"That armored woman's blowing the town apart—endangering lives!" he said to himself even as he triggered his powers, unfortunately burning away the civilian clothes he'd had on over his flame-proof uniform. "Ivana probably sent her after us—so I guess it's up to _Burnout_ to shut her down!"

With that being said, however incorrect the statement might be, the young GenActive went into action, launching himself forward through the air, he covered the distance in microseconds what would've taken him more than ten full seconds running on foot. Seeing the debris falling to cover and possibly kill the police officer, he used his powers to generate and cast forth a wave of flaming plasma to incinerate the falling masonry before it could do so. Fortunately, he was also able to control it so that it went no further and didn't accidentally set the building on fire even as he was destroying the debris.

As he did it, he shouted out to the officer, "Don't worry sir! I'll shield you from this falling wall!"

"Aaggh! The heat..." the man cowered and tried to shield his head.

"...will vaporize the debris before you're flattened. Relax!" Threat taken care of, he flew on and intended on taking out the perceived threat to him and his team, shouting back over his shoulder, "Now clear out of the area, cause it's about to get ugly!"

"You don't have to tell me twice, kid!" the officer shouted back, now helping with the nearby civilians and working on clearing the area.

At the same time, Harry was right across the street and witnessed the whole thing. Luckily, Burnout had the situation with the cop taken care of, but while he was dealing with that, the armored woman had run out into the middle of the street, apparently looking for something or someone. Looking around, Harry saw a family walking out from the ice cream parlor, a man walking out of the bank, a bunch of kids hanging out around the outside of the body shop, and half a dozen other random people just walking about, to say nothing of the cars driving past. And then, they all just stopped moving. Everything stopped, even the birds and insects in the sky.

Harry blinked and looked around again. Then he looked down at himself. He hadn't even realized he'd activated his powers, but by all appearances he had. Looking back up at the situation, he concluded that there were two options; one, isolate and contain the supervillain, or two, evacuate the civilians and contain the supervillain where she was. Considering he'd only seen two of an unknown number of abilities of that armor the blonde woman was wearing, and that didn't account for her having powers of her own, he felt the safest and overall best option was to evacuate the civilians. Which is exactly what he did.

He started with the family, moving the kids first and taking them a full three blocks away where he happened upon a neighborhood park. Then he went back and got each of the parents. Seeing the park as the best way point for the moment, he quickly worked his way through the streets and got everybody that he found over there at super speed. To them, they had perhaps only blinked and found themselves somewhere else. To the armored psycho woman and the rest of his team and the police, people were vanishing one by one, if not all at once, considering how fast he was going at that moment.

While their speedster handled crowd control, the rest of Gen13 were doing what they could to deal with the threat, who truly didn't seem to care about the damage she was causing in her rampage.

"I don't know how you tracked us here, lady," Burnout shouted as he approached the villain's position on the street, his plasma flames ignited to such a degree that he looked even more 'made-out-of-fire' than he usually did. "But you're not taking us back to the Compound without a fight!"

The Traveller noticed the approaching SPB, or meta as they would come to be known in the future, but seeing that he used combustion to propel himself through the atmosphere, she internally scoffed at his 'power level'. Already turning away to resume her search for her quarry, she cast a fusion blast over her shoulder as she responded, "I've no idea what you're prattling about, _primitive_."

"I'm going to—" Burnout started to say, but was cut off as the vermilion energy weapon hit him full on, knocking him out of the sky. "YUURFF!"

"But that fusion blast should end your interference!" Turning back to her task, she opened up with her scanners, saying, "While you waste my time, my quarry threatens all that exists!"

Coming out of the mini-mart and hurrying over to where Fairchild and Freefall were coming back from their errand, Grunge caught the tail end of the confrontation, and said to the girls, "Whoa! Armor chick's bustin' on Bobby! We should totally do somethin' bout that, right?"

The girls turned and glared at their somewhat dim teammate and friend. He just grinned back, hefted the still cold beer he'd just got and took a running step before tossing it at said armor chick while shouting, "Hey lady! You're bein' _way_ uncool! Lighten up, have a _brewski_!"

Whether through intention, planning, coincidence, or sheer dumb luck, the can of alcohol landed just shy of hitting its target, in fact landing on the ground in front of her and rolling to a standstill. Where she then stepped and tripped on said can, falling backwards right onto her but.

"Wha—?" the Traveller exclaimed as she fell down. "Whoa!"

Looking up, she saw Grunge standing there, looking a bit too smug for his own good, and putting down his bag of other goodies from the gas station. Rage overwhelming her sense in that moment, the Traveller didn't even bother excusing her own clumsiness or carelessness by paying too much attention to her scans and not enough to her surroundings. She merely charged her weapons and screamed at the 'primitive'.

"You'll _pay_ for that indignity, primitive!" she yelled, "I've just made punishing you my _primary objective_!"

"Like what about 'all that exists' and everything?" Grunge teased her, clenching his fists and getting into a ready stance.

"Langston will wait," she growled, getting back to her feet, "I'll kill you quickly."

"Bummer," Grunge shrugged.

"But I'm not so keen on kicking the bucket, y'know?" he replied, reaching down to a nearby fire hydrant and activating his powers, transforming from his normal, plaid-shirt and jeans wearing grungy self, into a iron-bolted red robot version of himself. "So I hope it's cool if I get myself a little armor action too. _Take your best shot, Iron Maiden_!" he screamed as his voice took on a slight mechanical quality.

Smirking, she replied back, "Don't worry, primitive. _I WILL_!" She unleashed another fusion blast, practically point-blank given that they were only a few yards from each other when she fired.

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_

" _WH~OOO~AA!_ " Grunge screamed as he was blasted back through three or four empty cars before crashing against the side of a larger van. "This sucks," was all the armored GenActive could say as he bounced along before coming to a jarring stop.

Fairchild, unable to stand by any longer, charged forward at full speed and was on the armored Traveller before she knew what was coming. "That's it lady!" she shouted, landing a heavy punch to the blond's face. "I'm taking you down!"

"Guungh!" the Traveller gasped as she was knocked back.

"Grunge! You OK?" Fairchild called out.

Stumbling to his feet, the red robot held up a 'thumbs-up', before reverting back to his natural state, his plaid shirt torn to pieces, but that was fine, it was starting to go rank anyway. Glancing around at their surroundings, Fairchild quickly shared with her teammate, Freefall, "We have to keep her busy and focused on us until Harry finishes evacuating all the civilians. Get back, and I'll try to..."

"Is there no end to you damnable children?" the Traveller growled out as she charged her weapons and then charged Fairchild, screaming, "Fine, then _I'll KILL YOU ALL_!"

 _ **SHAA-ZAAK!**_

The blast was delivered right inside of Fairchild's personal space, right in the gut, or at least as high as the blond could reach given Fairchild's impressive height, making it more like the lower-waist area.

" _ **YAAARRH**_!" Fairchild screamed as she was blasted away by the powerful force. When she landed, some meters away, she didn't get back up. But then, given _where_ she was hit, even with her invincible nature, she was going to need a minute or two.

Looking back and forth between her downed teammates and the villainess, Freefall just shrugged helplessly as the armored blond turned toward her with a dangerous scowl. "Uhhh, look," she said, "I'm not with those kids, OK?"

"I don't really care," the Traveller said, using her armor to pick up a nearby car, and then throwing it at the GenActive, "You'll die with them anyway!"

Jumping back and away, Freefall let out a brief chuckle as she responded, "Hey, so I lied. Can't you take a joke? No? All right, be that way."

Smiling now, Freefall turned her 'scared jump back' into a fighting stance as she used her powers to catch the falling car and redirect its gravitational pull. "I've got powers of my own, honey," she said. "And I'm not about to just let you trash me! Matter of fact, I'm gonna _feed_ this car right back at ya!"

Grimacing, the Traveller had only one response.

"I think not, primitive!"

 _ **SHAA-**_

She charged her weapons once more and took careful aim before unleashing the built up energy, neither noticing nor caring where precisely the car was in the air at that moment. "Not while I've still got a full charge on my _Fusion Gauntlets_!"

 _ **ZAAAAAAAK!**_

"Whuungh!" came Freefall's garbled cry as she was knocked back and lost her grip on the car's gravity. Fortunately for her, and the town, the car had been pretty close to street level so it didn't have far to drop. Unfortunately, it had been going at near-terminal velocity... horizontally, so it actually skidded and rolled until it wound up wrapped around a telephone pole, behind the villain.

Getting unsteadily to her feet, Freefall rubbed her head, while moaning, "Aaagh! My... my face! Hurts like hell! What the fuck is in those blasts? Felt like I was hit by a two-by-four!"

Stalking forward, the Traveller ignored the GenActive teen's moans, growling out words with each step, "Once I've finished with you girl, I can resume my... eh?"

She stopped when she felt something pulling at her left shoulder. "Hey babe—" Turning, she stared with disbelief as Grunge grabbed her by the arm and tossed her away, and finished saying, "—resume _THIS_!"

It had been his intention to toss her all the way across the street toward the gas station lot, where a fuel tanker was in the middle (or had been) refilling the station's tanks. But this _was_ the same Grunge that had thrown a beer can at this same armored woman that hadn't been thirty feet from him at the time, and had fallen _well short_ of the mark. He wasn't Fairchild, and she... still needed a minute.

So, it was, as Harry finished evacuating the last of the civilians, this scene that he came upon. Honestly, he was impressed that the Asian-American kung-fu-wannabe managed to judo-throw the armored villainess _at all_ , even though it was clear she wasn't going to go further than a few feet, if that far. Somewhat amazed that they weren't already being swarmed with Keepers, as Harry likewise believed along with his teammates that this was an agent of IO, or Ivana, sent to capture them, he knew that they needed to end this confrontation sooner rather than later, and then get the hell outta Dodge, as the saying goes.

Unfortunately, they couldn't exactly do that with this armor lady coming after them, trying to kill all of them along the way. But. There was the fact that, if she _was_ with Ivana, and if she _was_ trying to capture, or kill them for IO... where was her back-up?

Intentional training or not, Ivana had shown the entire Gen13 Team IO's playbook for dealing with SPBs back at the Project Genesis Compound, and even if this Traveller had some unknown powers she hadn't demonstrated yet, the standard procedure was to come in with a full tactical assault team. So... where were they?

And, as he stood there staring, watching as the purple-armor-clad blond "slowly" fell through the air from Grunge's judo-throw, Harry came to a startling realization.

She didn't have anything to do with IO or Ivana or the Compound.

Which means...

He groaned and slapped his hands over his face.

Which meant that they had just alerted IO, and Ivana, to the fact that they were in Oregon, allowing them to narrow their search from worldwide to just one state. It made it all the more important that they finish this quickly and move on, preferably heading in _any direction_ other than the one they had been going in.

But first...

Harry caught sight of Freefall's hands lighting up with sky-blue power, meaning she was shifting gravity, probably right around their villainess, but she was still rubbing her sore face, so he wasn't going to count on her having the best of focus right now. Being careful, as despite his "super speed", Freefall's gravity powers could affect him the same as everyone and everything else, Harry grabbed the armored blond by the power cables coming from the back of her suit to her gold gauntlets and 'yanked' her away from the grav-GenActive's grip and started dragging her back towards the alley where she'd first appeared.

To his surprise, however, right after he 'let her go', essentially throwing her against the broken wall, something in her armor triggered and... suddenly she was moving!

"RAAARGH!" she growled, flipping up to her feet after crashing into the ground.

"What?" she looked around, prompting Harry to do the same, confirming that, yes, everything else around them was still 'frozen', ie they were _both_ moving at super speed now. How was that possible?

Then she turned and glared at him, and smirked upon seeing his confusion. "Ah, I see. You're moving at an accelerated time rate. My fusion armor protects me from the effects of shifting time streams. That includes yours when manipulated to be 'outside' of time. Too bad that the moment I kill you, I'll revert back to the main time stream, it would be most useful in killing those other brats, moving at this speed."

Harry frowned and acknowledged the lady's threats. When she started shooting at him, he was sure to only trigger his speed to increase _after_ her fusion blasts had already been fired, and reverting it back to the same 'speed' before her armor could further adapt. It also, unfortunately, limited what he could do against this particular villain. Even though it had in truth only been a couple weeks, and there had only been the one big battle, Harry seemed to have adapted to possessing and using his new GenActive powers in a fight. It would be... nostalgic, he realized, to go back to how he _used_ to fight.

Due to the fact that there were no other wizards in the area, that made it incredibly more urgent to leave town as quickly as possible after this fight was finished. Because his spells would _absolutely_ be detected by the local magic law enforcement, who or whatever that may be.

"Stay still so I may kill you, primitive!" she screamed, firing several blasts in rapid succession.

He dodged each and every one of them, making sure to jump several feet away each time. Interesting of note, her blasts didn't seem to be causing much damage. About the same from what one might see from an metal bat swung at full force. Jumping further back during his last few dodges, he saw the damage further reduced, until at around thirty feet it was the same as kicking with heavy boots. Either she was conserving power, there was a limit on her "fusion blasts", or some other far more complex reason (AN: probably having to do with time travel), but whatever that reason, she couldn't do very much damage outside of fifty feet, and nothing lethal beyond ten feet directly in front of her.

Good. That's the kind of enemy he was used to dealing with.

Not wishing to hold back, standing just at fifty-one feet away from his opponent, not to mention no longer needing to trigger his powers to successfully dodge (the woman couldn't aim for shite!), Harry drew the Elder Wand from its hidden sheath and entered his dueling stance. He then took one step forward, and continued to do so for each attack she launched at him.

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ Step.

"Tch!" the Traveller grumbled. "You're a nimble one, aren't you?"

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ Step.

The funny thing was, he didn't even have to dodge the last two shots, they missed him by several inches on either side. He supposed she could be trying to 'compensate' for his expected dodging attempts, but after the third shot missed by a closer margin, though still several inches off, he realized she truly could not aim for shite at anything outside of a few feet from herself.

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ Step.

Fortunately, he did not have that problem. " _Stupefy_ ," he cast with the Elder Wand, the red jet of light streaking out in a straight line and hitting the armored blond dead center.

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ Step.

Too bad it didn't do anything, other than draw her attention towards him.

"Was that supposed to be your primitive attempt at an attack? Hah!"

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ Step.

That one had gotten closer than all the others, but that was understandable as he was now just over twenty feet from her now. Time to see how good his defenses were against futuristic technology. " _Protego_ ," he incanted, holding his wand up to maintain the shield.

 _ **SH-ZAAK!**_ _**FAASH-Fizzle!**_ Step.

"Wha—?!" she exclaimed, backpedaling in open shock. "How did you...?"

"It's called," he said even while casting another spell at her, "magic. _Stupefy_!" The jet of red light hit, but again, there was no visible effect.

"Hahaha!" the armored blond was suddenly laughing out loud. "I knew coming back into the past meant fighting primitives! Haha, but I never expected to be fighting a _fossil_!" She began charging her weapons again.

At that, he stopped his forward progress, standing just under twenty feet from her now, wand at the ready, but too surprised to really plan on doing anything. What did she mean by _fossil_?

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked.

She just shot him an evil smirk and replied, "Why don't I just _show YOU_!" She brought forth both hands and fired all her charged energy at once.

 _ **SHAA-ZAAK!**_

" _Protego_."

 _ **FAASH-Fizzle!**_

The vermilion blast of energy splashed against his shield, highlighting the edges and shape of it, but quickly fizzled out with no damage to the wizard. "And what was that supposed to show me exactly?" he questioned.

Snarling, she taunted him. "You're one of those mutant freaks that died out centuries ago. Just because you can biologically manipulate quantum fields at a telepathic level, you call yourselves _wizards_ and _witches_. Your kind don't even understand what it is that you do, and worse is that you wasted your potential. Its no wonder your kind went extinct. Now stand still while I reunite you with your fossilized kin!"

"Hm, no, I don't think so," he remarked and lashed out with the Elder Wand, silently casting a banishing curse followed by a tripping jinx. She was knocked back and fell to the ground, but not with the usual amount of force that he expected from those spells. She was resistant to magic, he realized.

"Tricks!" she screamed, getting back to her feet. "Is that all that you have, _fossil_?"

"Oh, I have quite a few tricks, actually," he remarked. " _Lumos_!"

A blinding flash of light right in the face bought him some time, time enough to 'run' around behind her and pull out his Invisibility Cloak. By the time she'd recovered from the glare, he had vanished from view.

"Wha...? Where did you go?!" she screamed, casting about for any sign of the wizard.

Getting right up next to her, Harry readied his spell and shouted out loud, " _DEPULSO_!" At such close range, and given that he'd boosted the power to the spell, it definitely had the intended effect this time. She was sent cartwheeling and flailing back down the alley toward where the others still were.

Harry then disapparated from the alley, and appeared next to his friends. With a casual wave, he cast the summoning spell, " _Accio armored bitch_!" He then 'slowed down' back to normal time, and was pleased to note that she 'slowed down' along with him, so that by the point they were both moving back at normal time, she was back within Freefall's "hands" and being "dropped" toward the same fuel truck Grunge had been 'throwing' her to in the first place. She crashed into the side of it like she'd fallen off a five-story building, with enough force to break open the side of the fuel tank and spill most of it down onto herself.

Completely unaware of any time passing since the moment Grunge did his judo-throw of the Traveller, they continued on as though nothing else had happened.

"Thanks, Grunge," Freefall said, cutting her powers after their enemy had crashed into the fuel truck. "I was on top of it, but—"

"But we're a team now, Roxy," Burnout interrupted her. "And we fight as a team!"

"Major emphasis on the _fight_ , dude!" Grunge agreed.

Harry watched silently (and invisibly) as the purple-armor-clad blond struggled to her feet, holding her left arm (probably dislocated, he assumed), ignoring the pooling gasoline at her feet as she shouted at them, "You've proven more of a _delay_ than anticipated, primitives. But my _armor_ is more than a match for your blows and _tricks_. Now I'll—"

"Hey, chill out, Lady!" Freefall interrupted her spiel. She took the time to light her cigarette before continuing, saying, "Y'know, I've been hearing that smoking's unhealthy..." She took a single drag and then flicked the still burning but toward the flooding pool of gasoline. "... What say we _test_ the theory?"

Behind the three of them, Harry shook his head and rolled his eyes as he removed his Invisibility Cloak and flicked his wand first toward the leaking truck, and then hastily at the area between his friends and the soon-to-be-inferno. Yes, Roxy's cigarette would ignite the gasoline, but it wasn't like it was in the movies. Not unless you ignited it while it was still 'contained', that is.

" _Incedio_ ," he cast at the truck, smirking at the Traveller.

"Wha—NO!" she screamed, not at Freefall dropping the lit cigarette, but at the wizard's spell.

" _Protego Pyros_ ," Harry made sure to protect them and the rest of the town from the sudden firebomb that the fuel truck had become. Which was a good thing, as they were less than twenty feet from the blaze, and the only one of them immune to fire was Burnout.

 _ **WHA-KOOOM! FWOOSH!**_

"Whoa," Grunge exclaimed as the flames covered the entire area beside the leaking truck, reaching almost a dozen meters into the air before quickly dying out as the fire burned through the fuel faster than most would expect. "Weenie-roast!"

"Ouch!" Freefall agreed.

"It's like I've been tellin' ya, Rox," Grunge commented, taking the younger girl by the shoulders. "Those things are nasty!"

"Okay, Grunge," she grumbled. "Point taken!"

Standing right behind them, Burnout was still 'active', not to mention privately wishing that he'd been the one to cast the ignition spark, and said, "If you two are done congratulating yourselves, our opponent isn't quite defeated yet."

"Nor shall I be, _boy_!" the Traveller cried out as she stepped out of the suffocating smoke, looking no more the worse for wear save that her skin-tight pants were torn and a few soot marks on her armor, but otherwise the same as ever.

"You may have scratched my armor, but—" she was saying, but stopped when a very strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder, and she found she couldn't move a step further after that. "Eh?"

"Armor," Fairchild's voice came through the smoke, and her green-clad arm was suddenly around the blond's throat, revealing that she'd 'snuck' behind the villainess after the flames had died out and quickly put her in a stranglehold. "Armor, armor, armor, _ARMOR_!"

Actually, Harry had just frozen time for the equivalent of ten seconds, what he judged to be the minimum time needed for the Traveller's armor to adapt to his powers, grabbed their powerhouse tank, and put her into place, before racing back to his 'spot' behind the others.

"I am sick to death—" Fairchild then used her free hand, the one not currently choking and restraining the fusion-blast throwing villainess, to grab a hold of the two gold cables running from the back of her armor to her gauntlets, the weapons that had been shooting off all those fusion-blasts.

Eyes going wide as she felt the tug and quickly deduced what it meant, the armored blond shouted out, "No! Let go of that—"

"—of your _stupid_ _ **armor**_!" Fairchild then easily ripped the cables apart with just her one hand. There were brief sparks, but then suddenly the blond's whole body went limp.

"— _power cable_!" Nadia was too late in saying as she felt the whole system lose power and found that she could barely move and her shields had all failed. She was as weak and frail as any of these primitives now, even moreso as she herself was hardly strong enough to move her armor without power going to the strength augmentations.

Seeing this, Fairchild dropped the Traveller to the ground and they were all relieved to see her drop to her hands and knees and struggle to even remain in that position.

"Not so tough with your power supply disconnected, are you?" Caitlin taunted her downed foe.

"Caitlin," Grunge commented enthusiastically. "You _nuked_ her!"

"This... can't... have... happened..." the blond sobbed. "My mission... my world... all _ruined_ because of a bunch of primitives... and a fossil..."

"What's she talking about?" Harry asked, walking up to the others as they stood over the defeated villain.

"Y'know," Roxy said, "I don't think she's one of Ivana's goons. Do any of you guys have a clue what she's talking about?"

"Like, I think she's callin' us _primitives_ ," Grunge said.

"No doubt a term you've heard before," Bobby remarked, finally turning off his plasma.

"I'm not sure _what_ she's talking about, Roxy," Caitlin said, "but I don't think we should wait to find out. We _are_ on the run, remember?"

"So... what should we do with her?" Harry asked, taking the broken pieces of futuristic power cables from Caitlin, before removing the actual gold-backpack power source from the armor at super speed. "She's obviously dangerous, de-powered or not. Can the local police even handle somebody like her? Do we call the Justice League hotline or something?"

"Well," the redhead said as she walked over to grab something and returned, "it isn't a permanent solution, but..." she trailed off as she proceeded to wrap the steel Stop sign she'd picked up around the armored blond.

"Should we write a note?" she then asked.

"I'll take care of that," Harry decided. "You guys get back in the van, I'll meet you at the edge of town. Don't worry. I'll catch up, I promise." He smiled at them.

They all nodded their heads and hurried back to their vehicle, still parked outside of the gas station, and were soon peeling off toward the highway, away from the approaching sirens. Harry watched them drive off, before turning to stare into the woman's blank eyes with a cold look in his own green eyes. She involuntarily shivered at that look, unable to explain why to herself.

"You called me a fossil," he said. "You called every person here a primitive. You said that my race is extinct. That my race _went_ extinct. Past tense."

He knelt down and, despite her struggling, removed the face-plate portion of her armor, revealing her face. She looked to be in her mid-to-early twenties, smooth white skin, and some kind of contacts in her eyes that made them appear whited-out, but were obviously some kind of technology.

"You're from the future. Far enough that everything about us, our society, our very existence is the same as those living in the time of the Dark Ages would be to us. Perhaps even further. Time travel is dangerous business."

"What would you know of it, _fossil_?!" she snarled.

He merely arched one eyebrow at her, and was pleased to see her blush and look away. " _Especially_ when you go around blowing up small towns and trying to kill people that could be _vital_ to historic events. Such as Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived?"

"Who?" she scoffed.

"Right," he nodded. "Wizards are extinct when you come from. Too bad for you that they are alive and well in the present, and your armor is out of commission. And..."

There was the sound of several sharp cracks nearby. Harry smiled darkly down at her.

"And this was the site of several illegal spells being cast, and you're the only one present. You probably could have escaped muggle prison, Miss Time Traveller, but I doubt you'll have as much luck with the local wizards." He then triggered his GenActive powers right as the local version of Aurors came out and quickly surrounded the bound villainess. He actually stood there for a while, watching as they went to work securing the area and taking the prisoner into custody.

Before they could completely seal off the area with wards, he ran down the road, and quickly caught up with the van. Knowing he could just as easily open the door, climb in, and shut it while it was still in motion, he instead ran on ahead and stopped next to the "Now Leaving..." sign and waited for them to catch up to him at regular speed. Once he was back aboard and in the backseat, Harry dove into the recently acquired snackage, as Grunge called it, and lay back down.

"I've been thinking," Caitlin said after they'd reached the freeway, "If that woman wasn't sent by IO or Ivana, what was she doing out here in the middle of Oregon?"

"Gee Caitlin," Bobby said, smirking at her from the front passenger seat, "You don't suppose she was lost, do you?"

Squeezing her fists, while being careful not to break the steering wheel, the redhead replied through clenched teeth, " _ **We're... Not... LOST**_!"

They all, except for the driver, laughed at that. Harry, in the back seat, laughed the hardest, but the shortest. It had been... a while since he'd laughed. And... even longer since he'd laughed with friends that weren't these same people. And just as long since he'd really cut loose with his magic as he had in that fight with the Traveller.

But, he realized, that wasn't what was bothering him all of a sudden.

It was... oh, wow. It was March. Late March at that. They had only escaped the Compound, what? Not even a full week yet. The anniversary of the Final Battle at Hogwarts would be coming up not too long from now. Which means that he was just a couple months, a few weeks really, from the day... from the one-year-anniversary of the last day he'd set foot in the Wizarding World.

Looking back through his memories, he confirmed that, yes, he'd been grabbed from London in the last week of May, so it had been... ten months and a few weeks at the Compound, and then they only escaped a little under a week ago? How time flies.

Tears pooled in his green eyes, thankfully hidden as no one was looking back at him at the moment, and he'd learned from a _very_ young age never to sniffle when crying.

That is what was bothering him. Today was the closest he'd ever been, since nearly a year now, to other magicals, other wizards and witches. He hadn't watched the American Aurors because he'd wanted to make sure the Traveller was taken into custody. No, he'd watched them because... he missed being among his own kind. And he was jealous.

Before... _everything_ , before the Final Battle, before Dumbledore's death even, he had wanted to be an Auror after graduating Hogwarts. But... that hadn't worked out, had it?

In thinking back, he knew that he'd wanted to be a "dark wizard hunter" pretty much ever since the job had been described to him in his Fourth Year. It was Moody, he realized. Mad-Eye Moody, or at least the stories about the _real_ one. To realize that there was an actual job that could mean hunting down those like the ones that had killed his parents, that had hunted him throughout his childhood, it was a boon to his soul and the release of an immense burden as he'd figured out what he was going to be, what he _wanted_ to be!

Funny how things turn out, he privately mused.

Of course, now that he was on the run, he couldn't exactly settle down and return to London, join the new Ministry of Magic, start a family with Ginny Weasley, have three or four kids, who he'd send off to Hogwarts on their eleventh birthdays, and make daily patrols of Diagon Alley while capturing or killing Death Eater scum on the weekends. Too bad he couldn't just...

Harry stopped his thought-train in its tracks and circled back to that last thought. ' _Too bad he couldn't just... Couldn't just_ what _? Couldn't just become an Auror anyway?_ '

To be an Auror, one had to be a part of the magical government, the Ministry of Magic, to be precise. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement if you want to really nitpick. But. There were _other_ dark wizard hunters out there. Ones that didn't... that didn't answer to just one _Ministry_... that didn't answer to _any_ government!

Hit-Wizards!

ICW licensed _Hit-Wizards_!

In muggle terms, they were the Interpol to the British DMI or the American FBI, and at the same time the international answer to the CIA, KGB, and all the other clandestine _assassin-filled_ organizations out there. And they could operate _anywhere_ that the ICW charter was recognized, IE _anywhere there were wizards_! And even quite a few places that weren't.

He... he could do it, he realized with a start. He could become a Hit-Wizard, a dark wizard hunter, and still stay with his team. Maybe even go back and get Ginny and that family if he really wanted to. Yeah... _Yeah_!

As he lay in the backseat of the van that Gen13 was running in, Harry Potter began to make plans. Since escaping the Compound, he'd been listless and depressed, as he had begun to think that perhaps he no longer had a future, not a real one, not one that didn't involve him fighting constantly. But now, now he felt new life surge into his being. He _could_ have that life that he'd wanted. If he _worked_ for it.

And he fully intended to work for it.

"Guys," Harry said, sitting up. "I've got something I need to tell you."

END 1/4


	5. Lynch Ends

Gen13 3/4 Continued:

 _Long Island City, NYC, NY_

Harry stood outside Borne's hideout, silently observing the 'abandoned' warehouse that the psychotic bastard called home, so to speak. It wasn't waterfront, but the harbor and docks weren't even a full block away. It was surrounded on all sides by similarly dilapidated warehouse buildings, and refuse littered streets. Surprisingly there was very little graffiti as even the gangs and 'street artists' considered this to be a bad neighborhood, too bad to even bother with apparently.

Taking a second look with a more trained eye, Harry saw that the poverty of the area was mere camouflage and it was clear that this 'abandoned' warehouse was the center for quite a bit of activity. For starters, delivery trucks and tinted-window cars drove into and out of the delivery area every three hours, like clockwork. For the fifteen minute period that those trucks were actually parked there, the loading area was a flurry of activity, and for the rest of the time the entire building and streets around it were dead quiet.

Then there was the security.

Cameras at every corner of the building, on both sides of each street. Motion sensors at the doors and windows. The windows, from a distance, looked dirty and dusty, but the closer you got the easier it was to see that they were actually tinted and a very distinct tint at that. Harry knew from his training at Project Genesis what bullet-proof glass looked like now. Also, there were the actual security guards. About half of them were dressed up as undercover homeless people wandering about the area, he guessed.

Although, it would be more accurate to say that _all_ of the homeless people in the area were actually patrolling security guards. Then there were the five men on the roof, one for each quadrant, and then the central one that couldn't be seen from street level. Each and every single one of them armed and carrying at the least a wand, most an extra enchanted item for some other unique boost or advantage or weapon he guessed.

Thanks to his Invisibility Cloak, Harry could get around undetected in spite of all the security, but he couldn't quite gain access to the warehouse as it had magical security on top of everything else. To be specific, it was warded up the wazoo.

Anti-Apparition, Anti-Portkey, Floo-Restriction, Anti-Detection, Intrusion, Identifier, Restraint, Unplottable, and even some actual Shield wards, albeit all of them of fairly poor quality. They probably needed near constant maintenance and drained power like Ron at an open buffet. He also suspected there were a few other magical surprises that needed to be activated first, but he was only guessing about that.

What he would normally use to get past the muggle security, the magic security stopped, and what he'd used to get past the magic security would have him almost easily detected by at least one or more of the muggle security measures. Which is where his 'training' came in as so useful, he smirked silently to himself, checking the clock one last time before everything started up.

Looking up from his watch, just in time, he watched as the first of the explosions went off right on time. To be specific, three abandoned and derelict cars—that really should have been towed by now—blew up, one after the other with a three second delay between explosions. It was like kicking over a hornet's nest, from the way all the security he'd noted moved immediately toward the explosion sites, while dozens more swarmed out of the supposedly abandoned warehouse building to protect against attack.

The moment the loading docks opened up, Harry was on the move. He had his Invisibility Cloak on hand, but wasn't wearing it, for the moment at least. Besides, he was moving so fast that he didn't need it for the moment. Running in amidst all the running bodies—that to him were more like mannequins he had to dodge—he got past the motion sensors and the outside cameras. The reason he couldn't just do the same thing when they were loading or unloading the trucks had to do with the _internal_ security.

Everybody, even the bosses in the top offices, which were behind coded keypads and biometrics and personnel warding, were now running outside or at the least leaving their doors open so they could get up-to-date reports on the situation. The few that _weren't_ running outside or leaving their offices open, were still outside said offices as they made their way to the building's safe room, or otherwise secure area where they could bunker down until the crisis was resolved in their favor.

Moving fast enough to be invisible to the human eye, and nothing but a red-and-purple colored blur to the high-speed cameras scattered throughout, he quickly managed to locate his target. But rather than knock him out and drag him from the place and back to his brother, Harry donned his Invisibility Cloak and slowed himself back down to normal speed and silently followed along as the panicked half-blood bastard hurried through his hideout to the safe room.

Once they were sealed behind locked doors and the wards brought up to full strength by a couple of criminal-looking Curse Breakers, the invisible Hit-Wizard made himself comfortable in a shadowy corner and observed for a while. He checked his watch a few more times, just to be sure, and was pleased when he heard/felt the remaining bombs go off right on time. Fortunately, the responding police would be handled by the 'legitimate' face of the criminal enterprise here, further distracting them from protecting their troublesome little asset that was his target. As important as Borne could be to them, he planned to make sure they knew that he wasn't worth the kind of trouble he'd be bringing on them in short order.

Not bad for an afternoon's work.

"What the hell is goin' on out there?" Borne asked one of the others holed up in the safe room. This one looked to be somewhat in charge, mostly judging from the way all of the 'grunts' in the room kept looking to him for instruction or approval.

"Why don't you tell me, Borne?" the man asked, his Jersey accent coming on a little strong. "For years, this place has been a haven for those pursuing... alternative income. We are but a hub in the vast network known to the common man as the Black Market. The cops don't bother us, the Feds leave us alone, and everybody that would try something like this, don't. Mostly because they've got merchandise coming through here same as everybody else."

The man, who Harry had now identified as mafia, though whether he was magical or muggle he couldn't guess yet, paused to light a cigar and took the time to puff out a few clouds, one directly into Borne's face.

"Then you show up," he continued, pausing now and again to further pollute his lungs. "Peddling fairly common, but nevertheless valuable cursed objects and a penchant for this kind of business. On the day that you show up, asking for protection, this happens." He took a long drag, the end of the cigar lighting up orange. "So, I'm thinking to myself, Tony, what the hell is it that we're protecting this mook from, and why the fuck should we even care or bother if this is the kind of shit that will rain down on us and everybody associated with you for trying? Huh? Answer the question, Borne!"

Gulping, the half-blood bastard wizard hurried to explain his way out of this mess.

"M-m-mist... Mr. Falcone, I can explain," he said, sweating. "I got word from a contact that-that-that my family, sons of bitches, have, well they hired a Hit-Wizard to bring me in. Now, I know that I haven't done much, but I can assure you that I'm a lot more valuable to you free than whatever it is they have planned for me. And despite... everything, I can't get at the family gold or valuables. It's guarded by goblins, you see..."

"I don't give a FLYING _FUCK_ what you idiot, inbred wizards do with your money or anything else!" Tony Falcone bellowed, slamming his hand on the table, rattling the whole room.

Harry's brow raised, subconsciously impressed at the display, while mentally cataloging the man's strength and temper for future reference. At the same time, he was silently (as in silent-casting) disabling each and every weapon on pretty much everybody else in the room. For the guns, that was as simple as a simple 5th Year Transfiguration Vanishing spell on all the bullets. For the knives and what not, sticking charms to pretty much keep them wherever they were at the moment; knives in holsters, bats on tables and walls, etc, etc, etc. The wands, however, they were trickier, and aside from himself and Borne, there were at least another half dozen wizards in the room. Each and every one of them with back-up wands and additional enchanted weapons.

For the magical weapons, well, he just had to straight up pickpocket them. Normally that would be difficult in a cramped and quite filled room, of furniture, cabinets, weapons, and almost twenty people, every single one of them highly alert and focused and naturally suspicious, even of each other. Not to mention his Invisibility Cloak only did so much, and muffling his footsteps, or covering him when he was running, specifically his legs, unfortunately fell outside its capabilities. Which is where his super speed came into play. Or to be more specific, his ability to manipulate time and to 'freeze' or slow down time for those he touched.

He'd done it on instinct against Bliss when breaking out of Project Genesis, but he'd since learned how to better utilize the skill. For instance, he could now 'freeze' somebody for only a moment of real time, but during that moment of stopped (for them) time, they could feel and recognize nothing that was going on around them. So it didn't matter how alert they were all being, or even how sensitive they were to the placement and condition of their wands. He could pickpocket them, snap the wands, transfigure the weapons, and replace the enchanted items with ordinary ones in quite literally _less_ than the blink of an eye. And they wouldn't be able to tell a thing until they actually tried to draw the wand or use the weapons and items. What was better, nobody in the room suspected or even noticed a thing. Any stray breezes from his 'passing' were taken care of as him just 'freezing' everybody in the room as he waited for it to settle and then the moment passes.

Now secured in his safety, or at least assured that nobody would be using any weapons or curses against him, he turned his attention back toward Borne's rather pitiful explanations and blubbering pleas for mercy and understanding.

"L-look, Mister Falcone, sir, I can fix this," Borne was saying. "I know a couple guys. Don't ask questions, work real cheap, and pretty tough in a fight, wand or no wand if you know what I'm saying?" He cleared his throat and quickly moved on. "I can track down this Hit-Wizard my family hired and warn him off. Or buy him off!"

"And what makes you think that this particular... Hit-Wizard, is the source of this sudden and... particular sort of trouble. The cops are going to be here in a matter of minutes, and will probably be in the area for the rest of the day. That is a day of business that is not being conducted here. That is a day of me and mine and everybody else losing money. A lot of money. Quite frankly, I'm thinking that if this mook after you is who did all this, it would be cheaper, and in my best interest, to just hand you over to him.

"But that wouldn't be in my best interest," Borne said, sounding rather pathetic.

Harry smirked and removed his Invisibility Cloak before Apparating to the middle of the room with an extra loud crack of displaced air. He'd been to the fight clubs a few times now while tracking down Borne and setting this all up, and he'd gotten a reputation as 'Thunder Crack' and was hoping to take advantage of that here. Or at least boost it a bit.

"No, Borne, it actually would be in your best interest to come with me now," he remarked casually, ignoring all the guns and broken wands now pointed right at him. "Because as angry as these upstanding... criminals are with you, that is nothing compared to how pissed they'll be with you if you let me get... creative."

"Who-who-who are y-you?" the bastard wizard stammered.

"I'm the Hit-Wizard that just blew up thirteen parked cars, and painted this building in signs signifying illegal activity. Delayed invisible paint," he explained to the mob boss. "Won't even show up until an hour after its been used, and then any attempts at covering it up just make it glow in bright neon colors."

"Kill him," Tony Falcone ordered.

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes as every single gun clicked back on empty rounds, and whatever other weapons they tried failed at the same time.

"Wrong move," was all he said before dropping a familiar Weasley Wheezes Product. The room was covered in utter darkness, but that didn't matter to Harry in the slightest as he was already wearing the glasses that allowed one to see through it. (A special request he'd made of the Weasleys that he'd gotten recently). In short order, he'd knocked out, either via Stunning Spell, or just a punch to the back of the head, all of the muscle in the room, and then pretty much everybody except for Falcone and Borne.

When the darkness faded away, Harry was standing in the exact same spot he'd been in beforehand, and Borne was cowering behind a standing Falcone.

"Who the fuck are you?!" the mob boss demanded.

"Name is Harry Potter," he replied.

"Th-th-th... Thunder Crack?!" Borne exclaimed.

"Hm, well at least it is better than calling me the Chosen One," he remarked in his native accent.

"Oh god," Borne looked sick. "The Dark Lord Slayer! I'm sorry! I'm so, so, so sorry! Mister Falcone, I had no idea! I'll go with you! I swear, I promise! Just don't kill me!"

Harry and Tony ignored the sniveling half-blood, more interested in the actions of the other at this point.

"Are you going to keep protecting him?" Harry asked, indicating the pathetic excuse for a wizard, switching back to his harsher American accent.

"An interesting conundrum," he remarked. "While I do not appreciate you as my enemy, Mister Potter, I have to admire your work. Are you now to be Borne's leash?"

"I was hired to bring him back to his family in exchange for a favor and standard fee. I need the favor, after that what he does is their business. But," Harry held up one finger, smirking, "To keep me from becoming an enemy again, as given my good work on this case the family just might see fit to hire me again when he runs off the next time, you might want to consider making him persona non grata, and just send him right back to them. Here," he held up a copy of the card the brother had given him for where to drop the bastard off.

"Now then," he jumped down off the table and grabbed Borne, pulling him up off the table. "Your wards are still up, and fully active, yes?"

Glancing over at a display on the wall next to the door, Falcone just nodded once. Harry nodded back, and then stealthily unleashed an Appa-Cracker, a noisemaker that made the same sound as a Disapparation. Then he slowed Borne down while speeding up to vanish from human sight, likewise froze Falcone, and then worked on getting out of the safe room. Wasn't too hard, the code for the door was right there on the table and a simple matter to open and close it after he and Borne 'disapparated'.

That was something else he'd discovered. Apparently when he 'froze' somebody, it wasn't permanent. Eventually their biology would resume normal 'regular speed' function, and depending upon the degree to which he slowed them down, it could wear off after a few minutes to a few hours. To Falcone, who didn't seem to be a man that noticed the passing of time as well as some, a few minutes of lost time in a room of knocked out guys (who'd be out for hours) wouldn't raise any suspicions.

Now, he just had to deliver Borne and then get his license, then maybe he'd go and check in on the others. Caitlin had said she'd be going home to her family in Portland, Oregon. Maybe he'd start there.

 _Next Day_

He'd been screwed!

More than that, he'd been conned!

He didn't _get_ conned! He _did_ the conning!

He'd conned the Dursleys into leaving him alone for an entire summer, thinking he could use magic on them anytime he wished! He'd conned the Minister of Magic into letting him live on his own in a magical shopping center! He'd actively conned the Coup'de'tat corrupted Ministry into allowing him free reign and managed to deliver some heavy blows for the war effort! He'd successfully robbed Gringotts! And he "conned" Ginny Weasley into a threesome one time! True story, no matter what anybody else says about it.

Borne had fallen through on his promise of a favor. Not Jacen, the other one, the one that had hired him to retrieve Jacen. His license was still being 'discussed' by the ICW board. It was supposed to have been sped through the system, not delayed further!

Tracking down Jonathan Borne was infinitely easier than tracking Jacen Borne had been. All he had to do was read the society pages of the local wizarding newspaper, the Daily Planet. Apparently the owner was muggleborn and a bit of a geek, even if they did not have anybody on the staff by the names of Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, or Perry White, it was a decent paper and arguably better than the Daily Prophet. The Editor-In-Chief did actually have the surname of 'White', but her name was not Perry or any other such derivative like that, and she did not answer to the title of 'Chief', despite many trying it out on her (only to be fired the next day).

Strolling into the Gentleman's Club (as in an actual old world "Gentleman's Club" rather than a strip club) as if he owned the place, he quickly found his quarry and cornered him before he even knew he was being hunted. Sitting down next to the young heir in a wing-back leather chair, Harry waited to see if he would be noticed, or if he would have to announce his presence. After a full three minutes, where the squirrelly punk did nothing but sip his tea and read some random magazine that the Hit-Wizard didn't recognize, he decided that apparently yes, he'd have to announce his presence.

"Borne, you screwed me, you Yankee wanker!" he hissed, speaking just loud enough to be heard by the legitimate son and no one else.

Jumping in his chair, Borne spilled the steaming hot tea all over himself and threw the magazine toward the ceiling in fright. The commotion this caused very nearly allowed Borne to escape Harry in that moment, but the GenActive was quite determined and even after losing him in the shuffling crowd (trying to help the lord's heir who'd just had an accident) Harry managed to find him again before he could disappear completely. Donning his own invisibility cloak, he stuck close to the weasel-like arsehole until said arsehole managed to sneak out the back to the alleyway behind the building and started looking for a better exit. Rather than allow that, Harry quickly immobilized him (using his Gen-Power as he didn't want to risk having his magic picked up on the weasel) and removed his cloak in a flourish. Despite being paralyzed and frozen, Jonathan Borne squealed like a piglet caught by a wolf upon seeing who'd been stalking him.

"You screwed me," Harry said again, speaking slowly so that he wouldn't be misunderstood. "You. Do. _NOT_! Screw. Me. Is that understood?" He released the paralyzing freeze he'd placed on him.

"N-n-n-now, m-m-mister P-Potter, I can explain," the snobbish heir apparent stuttered and whimpered.

"Don't explain," Harry physically hauled him back up to his feet. "Hold up your end of the bargain. I got you your brother, and you were the one that specified it didn't matter his condition, so long as he was still alive. Not only that, I turned him into persona non grata with the... what did you call them? Unsavory elements, was it? They won't touch him or offer him their protection any longer. As for his trail of bodies? Well, he and I had a little... chat about that before I turned him over. Are you even aware of what it is that your father does in his free time? Or what he and your brother have gotten up to over the years of... private father/son outings?"

He lowered his voice and whispered directly into the young wizard's ear, "Do you know where the evidence is buried? Because I do." Stepping back, he said more conversationally, "Hold up your end of our bargain, get me my license today, before the afternoon in fact, and you don't need to worry about a thing. I'll hang onto my information about you and yours, and you can be assured that I'll only use it when I need a future favor from you or yours. This isn't a bribe, just so we're clear." He clapped both hands on the young man's shoulders. "It is a threat. And a warning. And an all around general disclaimer to never, ever screw with me. Understood?"

Not trusting his voice, the legitimate Borne just nodded his head in avid agreement.

"Good. Now, go make those floo calls, or whatever, and get me my damn ICW Hit-Wizard license already!" he snapped, privately enjoying the way the rich kid jumped and ran off like a punished House Elf.

He went back to his hotel room, still being rented by IO for their 'Agent' that had initially tried to track him down. Apparently the man had a standing reservation, and with his new computer skills, it was simplicity itself to steal the government stooge's identity for the sole purpose of living out of his 4 Star Hotel suite. The hotel itself was 5 stars, the room was one of their middle-class venues, therefore 4 stars.

The letter arrived an hour after he'd settled in. In England they used owls, while in France they used vultures, and in America... they used pixies. Specifically Louisiana Pixies, and where Cornish Pixies looked like blue-furred hellions, these were a mixed color of brown and green and looked more like humanized chipmunks or mice. (AN: Think "Rescue Rangers" with wings, and all as hot as Gadget) They were also a great deal more polite.

So, now he had his license and was "Officially" a Hit-Wizard. Time to take on some jobs and gather the team, he decided. He cast a quick spell to let him locate the nearest member of his new team and determine their condition. Imagine his surprise when he discovered it was none other than Colonel John Lynch. And he was in the city.

Well... sort of. He was currently somewhere _over_ the city.

At least, that is what he assumed upon seeing the results saying he was over a hundred and fifty feet in the air.

Glancing up in the direction the spell indicated, Harry tapped the Elder Wand against the side of his glasses, temporarily charming them with what basically amounted to Super Vision, letting him see everything in front of him in as much detail as he wished. True, thanks to his Gen Factor he didn't actually need glasses anymore, but he'd gotten really used to them, and thanks (again) to certain Weasley Wheezes Products, not to mention other old friends from school that had helped equip him and trick out his uniform. The glasses were still thick-rimmed and round, but they could self-transfigure into hi-tech specs that further masked his identity, _on top_ of being equipped with all manner of useful functions.

At first, he couldn't tell what the scrying spell had been pointing to, but he was patient and paid close attention to detail. Finally, after a solid two minutes of looking, he happened to catch a brief glimpse of the scarred colonel, he was looking down out of a skyscraper window with a drink in hand. The room, from what very little Harry could see of it from his angle and elevation, appeared to be a board room or office of some kind. Quickly cataloging the address before taking a quick look around at himself, he decided to err on the side of caution, being as close as he was to the ICW HQ, there were wards of all kinds all over the island, some of them Anti-Apparition that could cause him to splinch himself if he wasn't careful.

With that in mind, he decided a good jog was in order at the moment. Making sure none could see him at the moment, he activated his powers and started to run as fast as he could toward the address. Maybe he could get some actual answers from the mysterious colonel this time.

Running through the city as most everything around him was unmoving, or at least slowed way down, was still something he found himself amazed at. He kind of hoped that the novelty of it never went away, even as he dodged speeding cars, walking pedestrians, and tried to stay in all the hi-speed traffic cameras blind spots. Eventually, he made it to the correct building, and it was simplicity itself to enter and get past security unobserved. Even if any of the cameras or other automated devices could have detected him, they'd only record the slightest moment of his passing. He didn't feel like waiting for the elevators, and besides there was less security around the stairs anyway. Though he made sure to snag a few snacks from the kitchen and various vending machines on his way to the floor he'd observed Jack Lynch on.

He _really_ needed to get a handle on his new metabolism.

Finally reaching the appropriate floor, he cast the locator spell once more and quickly identified what room the man was in. He had several means of entry available to him, from moving at super speed to pick the lock and get past the door before any of the occupants could even realize it had happened, to apparating in silently under his invisibility cloak. He decided to go with a combination of the two, donned his cloak, magically vanished the door itself, stepped through the threshold at super speed, then magically returned the door, all in less time than it takes for the average human brain to process information. Thankfully, when he accelerated himself, his magic was likewise accelerated, so he didn't have to 'wait' for his magic to vanish the door and replace it, it all happened at the same speed he was already moving at.

Inside the room, Colonel Jack Lynch was standing near the window, dressed in the exact same outfit that he'd observed the man in the last few times he'd seen him. Admittedly, that was during an attack on a secret government black ops project, and the subsequent clean-up, but he was starting to get the impression that the scarred Colonel really liked wearing black turtlenecks and black cargo pants with black combat boots.

He was in the middle of speaking with another individual in the room there, but that did not make them the sole occupants either. Looking around, Harry realized that he recognized most of the people standing around, talking with Lynch. With only one or two exceptions, he was looking at the surviving members of the original Team 7. Gen12 in other words.

The only ones not accounted for were his own link to Team 7, Jake Evans, and Caitlin's father, Alex Fairchild. Of course, official records listed both men as MIA for several years now, nearly two decades in the case of then-Commander Evans.

The rest, however, all seemed to be present, including; Cole Cash, Michael Cray, Marc Slayton, Jackson Dane, Phillip Chang, and the ever illusive Stephen Callahan. Who was _supposed_ to be dead, but quite obviously was not. It made Harry wonder about his grandfather and Kat's father, given that they were reportedly dead as well.

The other people in the room who were not a part of Team 7, were still obviously trained and part of the "business", and apparently were quite friendly with Lynch. At the very least, they weren't here to attack or kill him. Looking around for any unwanted surprises, Harry quickly found himself a corner to hide in so he could still observe what was going on. Then he quickly secured his invisibility cloak and settled himself in for a listen.

It was very enlightening, to say the least.

"Enough stalling!" Cray suddenly snapped. "What is this all about, Lynch?"

"If this is some kind of trap," Callahan warned, "Then consider it open warfare. I'm just saying."

"No, no trap, no tricks, no ambush," Lynch assured the collection of lethal soldiers. "I just thought I'd get us all together for... well, to let you know of something that has happened recently."

"And what is that?" Cash scoffed, playing with his lighter.

"Ivana tried to resurrect Project Genesis," he stated.

Harry was actually somewhat impressed with the reaction this simple statement received. As in he was impressed that the room remained undamaged, given the glares and obvious hatred it sparked. He also made sure to keep his Occlumency shields at full strength for the duration he was in _any_ of these men's presence.

"Is this supposed to be some kind of sick joke?" Cash demanded, pulling down his red and black scarf-mask, subtly reaching for the guns strapped to his sides.

"I only found out a few months back," Lynch explained, "but it was all circumstantial. I investigated myself, not trusting anyone else with such... sensitive matters. I saw your son there, Chang. And Fairchild's daughter, and..."

"Who else?" Cray demanded. Harry could see exactly why this man's codename was _Deathblow_.

"And Captain Evans' grandson," Lynch admitted, looking down and away.

If mentioning Project Genesis had filled the room with tension, _this_ mention filled it with killing intent. Harry didn't need _any_ psychic potential to feel exactly how much each and every one of these soldiers wanted to kill the man standing before them. Apparently his grandfather had been a pretty big deal, Harry realized.

"And?" Cray said, standing at the ready, but not reaching for any weapon. Yet.

"And," Lynch said, looking back up at all of them, "I started making plans. I gathered every person in IO that I could still trust, that would trust me, and a few Black Razors and enough hardware and resources to take the base in one strike. The moment I was ready, I went back in there and I liberated the subjects and took control of the base. Only..."

"Only, what?" Chang finally spoke up. "What happened to my son, Lynch?"

"Six subjects had already manifested and escaped custody and... were fighting Threshold and Bliss," Lynch shot a dark look toward Callahan, who had the grace to look away at the mention of his children. "An unknown number of subjects were already frozen and taken away by Ivana and her people, but the rest... somehow they had already been evacuated. I confirmed that they weren't taken by Ivana, but neither did they escape on their own. Apparently... they were liberated by one of the subjects that had already escaped; Harry Potter. Captain Evans' grandson."

They all smirked, some even chuckled.

"Chip off the old block then," Slayton laughed.

"What's this got to do with us?" Cash interrupted the good mood. "Not that we aren't grateful to know that IO is still pulling this crap, but if most of them got away, and you know where a handful are... so what?"

"At first," Lynch sighed, "I thought that Ivana had gone rogue. That she was doing this behind everyone's backs. She wasn't. It may not have been common knowledge, but she'd gotten the green light to restart Project Genesis, using _our children_ , from the highest levels of IO, and the support of several other organizations under the IO's umbrella. Knowing that, I can't in good conscience continue working with these people. So... I've quit."

They all seemed to digest this for a few moments.

"And," Chang spoke up, apparently 'getting it' the first, "without you on the inside, we'll no longer have a heads up if IO suddenly decides to come after any of us again? This is... fair warning?"

"Something like that," Lynch shrugged.

"You're holding back, Lynch," Cray accused. "There's something else, isn't there?"

Lynch nodded. "I'm taking the kids and hiding out. I'll train them up, just so they can defend themselves. Maybe even start doing some of the work that IO is _supposed_ to be doing in the world. Besides letting you all know that I can't cover for you with IO anymore, I guess I'm asking if anybody else wants to come along and help out with the kids." He shot a pointed look at both Chang and Callahan.

"No," was Callahan's immediate and definitive response.

"You may be out, Lynch," Chang replied. "My position within CyberTek, and thus IO is still secure, and I am not about to give it up to watch my idiot son further disgrace himself and waste his potential. I haven't seen him for over a year now, and the both of us are just fine with that. If IO catches him, or something happens, I'll... do what I can, but I will not help you in this... endeavor of yours."

"CyberTek is only one very small piece of the cybernetics division of IO," Lynch reminded them all. "GloboDigiDyne, Paradise Valley Chemicals, Primatech, Cyberdyne, InGen, Leviathan, ARGUS, Castleman, Macintosh... Those are only the top ten _publicly-traded_ companies that are an integral part of IO. There are _hundreds_ more of privately-owned companies, firms, and military divisions that are part of the greater whole, and that isn't even counting the government contracts and cabals behind the scenes. None of you even have a clue just how big the IO truly is, do you?"

"I know a billionaire or two," Cash commented lazily.

"The IO doesn't care about money," Lynch pointed out. "If it did, it would have its own currency that all others would feed into. How exactly do you think I'm funding this little summer camp I'm planning?"

"So," Cray concluded. "You're quitting the IO, you're taking the latest _mistakes_ of Project Genesis under your wing and turning them into the next incarnation of Team Seven, just one that does some actual good, and you're doing it with IO's own blackbag funds. That about cover it?"

"... Yes."

"So what do you need from us?" Deathblow asked.

"I..." Lynch struggled to speak, finally he just sighed and said, "I was hoping for a little bit of help. Support and aid, maybe just few words of advice at the least. I guess Team Seven truly is finished then, if this is all that is left of us. I'll try not to disappoint you all with our legacy."

Lynch turned and stalked back over to the floor-to-ceiling length windows, arms crossed.

"You all know where the door is."

Snorting, Cash rolled up his mask and finally lit the cigarette he'd been toying with for the past few minutes, muttering loud enough to hear, "Prick."

He, Slayton, Callahan and Dane all left with dirty looks cast at Lynch behind them. Chang was the next to last to leave, turning to say over his shoulder, "Take care of my son, Lynch."

"I will, Phillip," the one-eyed colonel promised.

Cray was the last one there, and when he casually glanced over at the corner Harry was 'hiding' in, the Hit-wizard nearly shit his pants. The man was _that_ intimidating and moreso! Fortunately, for all of them, the man called Deathblow chose to ignore whatever he 'saw' there, and went over to Lynch by the window.

"If you're ever in trouble, Lynch," Cray held out a simple business card, "call me. I'll back you up, just like always. We owe those kids that much, at the least. Take care of them."

"That is my intention," he replied.

Just before the soldier could leave, however, Lynch called him back. "There is... one favor that I need your help with, Cray. I need to get down to McLean, Virginia. If me and these kids are going to disappear, there are some things that I need to take care of."

McLean, Virginia. The only thing of note in the entire county-area was International Operations' Global Headquarters. And primary servers. The _Towers_.

Harry felt it was... time, to reveal his presence. He wanted in on this mission.

Freezing time only long enough to remove and put away his Invisibility Cloak, Harry walked over to the other side of Lynch from Deathblow and resumed 'normal' time. To both men's perspective, he'd simply appeared out of thin air.

"Wow," he commented in the silence following his appearance, looking out across the New York skyline. "Good thing that I've just finished the last of my business in New York then. When do we head out, _Mister_ Lynch?" He smirked, turning to look at the former colonel.

Micheal Cray glanced down at the scrawny, dark-haired, green-eyed punk in jeans and a sweatshirt standing there next to Lynch, looking out the window. Glancing over to meet Lynch's one-eyed gaze, he asked, "Evan's grandson, I take it?"

Lynch merely nodded once.

"Heh," Cray chuckled. "Must run in the family."

"Both sides," Harry agreed.

"Damn kid, ya got my sympathies," said Deathblow.

"..." Harry looked out the window once more, and said, "So, are we doing this, or what? I'm meeting up with the others in Vegas in a few days. It would be nice to know if we could actually relax without having to worry about IO coming after us."

"Still need me, Lynch?" Cray asked.

"Going to need transport," Lynch remarked. "And a few... tools of the trade."

"I can teleport and stop time," Harry pointed out.

"I know the way in and how to get in and out undetected," Lynch countered.

"How many of you even knew I was in the room?"

Deathblow grinned.

"Besides the walking, talking, mountain of killing," Harry amended.

Lynch thought it over.

" _If_ ," he stressed the word, "I take you with me, you'll follow my orders, and no going off on your own. This needs to be surgical. Removing us from the I-Core, transferring the necessary funds, and deleting all files on Project Genesis."

"What files?" Harry grinned.

"Oh, I'm starting to like this kid," Cray laughed out loud.

"Are you telling me that you hacked the I-Core, remotely?" Lynch asked, unbelieving.

"I hacked Project Genesis," he shrugged. "Removed all trace of me, my team, and corrupted all the files having to do with all the Gen13 subjects. Put a virus that spread to the back-ups. All of them. Might want to double-check to see if they're the real files or not before just outright deleting them. If you _really_ want to cripple Project Genesis once and for all," Harry turned to face the two old soldiers, "we're going to need to go after the hard copies. Data is easy to manipulate, corrupt and delete, once you know how. What they _can't_ afford to lose are the hard-copies of all the data. Know where _that_ is?"

Deathblow and Lynch exchanged indecipherable glances between one another.

"Right, so, that is what I'll be taking care of then," Harry acknowledged, turning back to the window. "You take care of what you need to at the Towers, I'll be hunting down all the actual files... Craven? As in, Miles Craven?"

"The current head of IO," Lynch explained. "The number one of the Three Directors of IO."

"Right," Harry thought it over. "So, he'll have an offline back-up with him at all times. But there is still the disseminated information he passes along to the scientists and lackies he has doing his dirty work. None of it the whole picture, but enough for them to work with. Either of you know where I can _find_ Craven right now? Better yet, have you got something of his that I can borrow for a little while?"

They exchanged another few glances and then mutually decided to see what this young pup had planned, and determine if there was anything else they could do to help him along. Harry, without revealing his magical trump card(s), quickly outlined a plan with the two men and they spent the rest of the night hammering out the details and uncovering the flaws until they felt they had a fairly decent plan by morning.

Now all that remained was getting it taken care of.

 _To Be Concluded..._


	6. Epilogue

Gen 13 4/4: Settling Down... Way Down!

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. Caritas, Sunnydale, and etc belong to Mutant/Enemy productions and the Whedonverse. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me.

Summary: Rather than La Jolla, the newly minted Gen13 Team take up residence in Sunnydale! Yes, _THAT_ Sunnydale!

Story:

They'd all met up in Los Angeles, rather than Las Vegas as planned. Although Bobby and Sarah did pick up Grunge and Roxy there on their way through, Harry and Caitlin had both gone on to LAX, one via plane, the other via... other means. Harry had set the meet, having given himself enough time to get the lay of the land in this part of the country.

Originally, Lynch had planned for them to lay low and train up in a safe house that he'd set up in the comfortable, yet low key suburbs of La Jolla, California. His 'conversation' with Harry in New York and their subsequent mission together had changed that a great deal. It was a bit further North than expected, but their new safe house for them to "lay low and train up" at was in a much better place, at least insofar as the GenActive Wizard cared. Lynch would just have to make it work.

Harry was actually there, waiting, as Caitlin stepped off the plain. Or rather, at the Arrival/Departure terminal of the massive metropolitan airport. She'd gratefully taken the opportunity to change out of her battle-damaged attire, but the fact that it was a practically identical floral sundress spoke volumes about both the young woman's taste, and limitations in wardrobe. The young wizard briefly allowed himself to wonder if his friend even had anything _other_ than those flower covered dresses and her battle uniform/costume, insofar as anything that could still fit her.

Doing a brief side-by-side in his head, as Fairchild walked up to him, Harry realized that what was mid-thigh on the current Kat would've been ankle or floor-length on the old Kat. And not just because of her height.

"Harry!" Caitlin exclaimed as she caught sight of him and rushed forward to hug her teammate. "How did you get here? I thought you'd stayed behind or gone on to meet with the others?"

Harry smirked and chuckled softly as he was reminded that it had only been about a day and a half, at most, since the two had last seen each other at her childhood home.

"I did, Kat," he answered, putting his arm around her waist as he began to escort her toward the exits, rather than baggage claim. She didn't have any anyway, seeing as he'd brought it all with him. "Or have you forgotten what my powers are?"

"No way," she flatly stated. "While the jet wasn't exactly supersonic, there is no way that you could've run from Oregon to Nevada and then to the western most part of California in less than thirty hours! Not without exhausting yourself at least!"

"Ha ha ha!" he laughed. "Very true. Very true. Except I didn't run, Kat."

"Then how...?"

"I'll show you once we get outside and out of range of any cameras pointed our way," he said.

"Harry, what is going on?" she asked.

Rather than answer, he just smirked and continued walking with his arm around the tall redhead's waist as he clocked all the security around the terminal, both cameras and personnel.

The first moment that he was able, ie when nothing was looking their way, he _accelerated_ himself and Caitlin to his top speed so that essentially, to their eyes, everything had stopped.

"Sorry, had to make sure we wouldn't be overheard," he said, finally answering her. "Nobody is in danger, no one is after us, but IO has a record of what plane you got on and where it was headed. We need to make the trail drop cold, but what would be better is if we could ensure a few dozen extra leads that go nowhere. So, I need to borrow a few of your hairs, Kat."

"Wait, what?"

 _Caritas_

 _Los Angeles, CA_

 _April, 1999_

"Whoa, dude!" Grunge exclaimed upon passing the threshold of the underground club/bar.

"Welcome to Caritas," Harry stated, being the last one over the threshold. "Let's get a table and then we can talk, all right?"

"Something tells me that this is going to be a very interesting talk," Rainmaker remarked as she followed along behind the others, her eyes locked on a few of the bar's... denizens.

"Is this a theme restaurant or something?" Fairchild asked as they took over a corner booth near the back. There had actually been a couple of normal looking guys (though they wore dark clothes and had pale complexions) already sitting there, until Harry stepped forward and flashed something at them and they scampered away like vampires from a holy cross, hissing and everything.

"It's a karaoke bar, not a restaurant, although their nachos are pretty amazing," Harry commented, putting himself and Grunge at the 'ends' of the booth, with Kat in the middle. "And it isn't a... theme, either. We're going to have a conversation, guys. And by the end of it, you'll all know three things that I know none of you even believe at the moment. Maybe more. I also know that these things are going to be... impossible for at least one of you to believe."

"Oh, we might surprise you, _Thundercrack_ ," Rainmaker mused, eyeballing a couple of the 'costumes' around the bar.

"There is no violence here," he stated. "And I have the odd inkling that you'll all find out why sooner rather than later."

"So, dude, what's the what?" Grunge asked.

"Yeah," Burnout chimed in, "What is so impossible for Grunge to believe."

"I didn't say that Grunge would be the one unable to believe," Harry replied. "But fine. Let's start with the most obvious and most difficult to prove, and end with the easiest to prove, but the one thing none of you are going to believe. First thing..."

"The English accent is fake!" Grunge 'guessed' triumphantly.

Harry stared at the tattooed GenActive, as did the rest of the table, until Edmund Percival Chang was sufficiently humbled and looking down in shame.

"No, my _American_ accent is fake," he grinned while over-emphasizing his native accent. "First thing is that, well, OK, let me start like this." He took a deep breath and sat a bit straighter in his seat. "Y'know how each of us now have superhuman abilities thanks to whatever our individual gene pools are combined with the chemical and radiation and other procedures they were doing on all of us at the Compound? Well, there is a lot more to the world than us having super powers. Supernatural things."

"Such as vampires and demons," Rainmaker commented.

Harry nodded, glad that at least one of his team was also 'in the Know' about things. "And magic and angels and wizards and witches and werewolves and Fae and all sorts of other _stuff_. It is all real. All of it."

Suddenly Gen13 was looking around the karaoke bar with new and wary eyes.

"So..." Caitlin said, "all these people in costumes... aren't?"

"The ones with pale skin and dark, or out of style clothes, are probably vampires," he explained. "The ones that obviously are not human at all, yeah. Demons. A few of the 'normal-looking' people that have odd eyes or hair or something else you just can't describe about them, they're probably one of the Fae. Suffice to say, if it isn't human or demon, it gets classified as a breed of Fae. Unless they happen to be a witch or a wizard."

"What about all the suits?" Roxy questioned.

"Ah, they're actually lawyers for a demon law firm known as Wolfram&Hart," he answered.

"Before we get too distracted," Sarah interrupted. "What was the second thing you were going to tell us, Harry?"

"Magic is real," he stated.

They just turned to look at him, no longer eyeballing all the non-human occupants of the bar.

"That's it?" Bobby scoffed.

"Magic isn't real," Caitlin stated, arms crossed.

"Magic is real," he said again.

"No, it isn't," she insisted. "It can't be."

"Oh, I get it," Grunge said. "You were talking about Kat not believin' ya!"

"What is the thing that we're all not going to believe, then?" Freefall asked.

Taking a deeper breath, Harry pulled out his original wand and tapped the center of the table and conjured an ornate centerpiece complete with candles that he then lit one at a time with a single tap to each. "I'm a wizard," he finally said after his demonstration was complete.

"That... that... that was a _trick_!" Caitlin insisted, leaning as far back away from the candles as possible.

"No way," was all Grunge could say.

"Unbelievable," Rainmaker gasped, flabbergasted.

"Whoa," Burnout grunted.

"Outta sight!" Freefall exclaimed. "Hey, is that how you kept making all those cigarettes for me?"

In reply, he merely snapped his wand in her direction briefly, and a pristine white cylinder of tobacco and paper appeared, quite literally, before her eyes before falling into her hands. Not wasting it, she lit it from the center candles and took a nice long drag from it. "Oh yeah," she grunted with addicted relief, "That's the stuff. OK, I totally believe he's a wizard. Although you really should have kept that as your codename."

"Yeah, except I really _am_ a wizard, so that would be like Rainmaker's codename being _Apache_ , or Grunge's being _Asian_ , and Fairchild's being _Amazon_. Besides, I got my new codename back in New York in a fight ring. They don't make up wussy names, as you say, in fight clubs. And while I can't run at the speed of light yet, I _can_ break the sound barrier, so _Thundercrack_ is a good name for me, I think."

"Magic isn't real!" Caitlin suddenly interrupted. "It's all just superstition and illusions and _tricks_!"

"Magic is real," Sarah countered, surprising most of them. "I should know. I've believed in magic since I was a little girl. There is a lot more to this world than what science can explain, Caitlin."

"Besides, aren't like half the supervillains out there claiming that they use dark magic or something?" Bobby pointed out.

"Again, illusions and tricks!" the stubborn redhead insisted.

"Don't break it," Harry said as he handed over his wand, "but feel free to examine this to your hearts content. It is merely a hollowed out piece of wood with a feather stuffed inside. Nothing more. Nothing less. But it _is_ a magic wand."

"I... All right," Caitlin took the wand and looked it over as closely as she possibly could. She wasn't about to break it or open it up, this was her friend's property after all. When she finally held it by its grip and tried waving it around, something entirely unexpected happened then.

Red and gold sparks flew out of the tip of the wand and the flames on the centerpiece candles all grew to flame-thrower level fires. Harry immediately snapped the wand back from the woman's hands.

"OK, definitely _not_ letting everybody have a turn with my wand here," he said as he vanished the candles and repaired the small amount of fire damage done. "But I am definitely getting you all tested to see what level of magic you all have. Because _that_ should not have happened."

"What should have happened?" Caitlin couldn't help asking.

"To be honest," he shrugged. "Nothing at all. To anyone without magic, this is just a wooden stick On top of that, this is my matched wand. To get _that_ kind of reaction from it... you'd either have to be my twin and exactly like me in every way possible—magically speaking—or you have enough raw magic that..." he trailed off as the implications finally hit home for the Hit-Wizard. "Yeah, next stop after this, I am getting you all tested for magic."

"So," the redhead said after a lengthy and quite uncomfortable silence. "Magic is real. You're a wizard. And a GenActive. And apparently, we, or I at the least, have magic as well. Any other bombs you want to drop on us, _Thundercrack_?"

"Uh, let's see," he mumbled to himself, counting off on his hands as he listed, "Supernatural, abnormal creatures, magic is real, I'm a wizard... oh! Right, most important thing. The... safe house, that Lynch set up for us, I've spent the past few days, setting up contacts and getting to know the lay of the land. Turns out, the whole town is built upon a supernatural convergence, aka portal, that leads to various demon-controlled dimensions. It is called the Hellmouth. Currently it is closed, but a side effect of it even existing is that supernatural energies and various creatures permeate the area. Mostly demons, vampires and a small tightly-knit magical community of various witches and wizards and other mystics. It is why I am telling you all about this now, or even at all."

"Wait," Roxy interrupted him with a glare, having already finished the cigarette he'd conjured for her. "What you're saying is that, if we weren't going to a town where all this stuff exists, so we couldn't even go a block without bumping into some vampire or werewolf or whatever—you wouldn't even have told us about all this in the first place?!"

Harry leaned back, frowning. He considered his answer very carefully before taking a deep breath and answering, "No. I wouldn't have."

Before they could all throw a fit and start accusing him of anything, he quickly continued. "I may have one day told you about magic and that I'm a wizard, but no. If we were going anywhere _other_ than Sunnydale, California, I would not have told you about demons, the supernatural, or of the Magical World. Quite simply because you truly didn't need to know before this moment."

"How can you say that!" Bobby yelled.

"What does it change?" Harry challenged. "You knowing about magic and demons and everything, what difference would it have made in _anything_? I'm telling you about this now, because you now _need_ to know! Before, you didn't. Hell, I'm a wizard and I wish sometimes that _I didn't know_ about all of it! This isn't some secret or anything about trust! Knowing about this shite? It is a burden. It is a bloody curse, of the worst sort. How many people are there in the world? Six, almost seven billion? I guarantee you over a _billion_ of those numbers are either Fae, vampires, or some kind of demonic force at work. The rest of the world don't have a clue about what really goes on in the day-to-day. Of ordinary humans, counting us, there are maybe a few hundred thousand that know about all this. And every single last one of them _envy_ the rest of the herd. I guarantee it."

They were all quiet after his brief tirade. He just sat back and let them think it over and process everything he'd just told them.

After about, maybe a minute, minute and a half at the most, Grunge leaned forward and broke the chilly atmosphere with a simple question.

"So, are the nachos here really that good?"

It took a second, but soon the whole table was laughing hysterically. And ordering nachos.

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Sunnydale, CA_

 _The Next Day_

They all arrived together, pulling into the driveway of three-story tiered building that could almost be confused for a modern art piece. The whole place, from the garden to the walls, to the 360 degree windows and balconies practically screamed " **RICH!** " in all bold. Getting out of the grungy van they'd basically been living out of for the past month or so, the young heroes stopped just short of stepping onto the property of the place. After a lengthy silence, Caitlin finally spoke up.

"This is the address Mr. Lynch gave me," she said.

"Beau-coup bucks is what it is," Sarah commented, arms crossed.

"And _this_ is supposed to be our new home?" Bobby asked, hands in his pockets. "Looks more like a Legoland nightmare, you know?"

"Actually, it's an original work by the famous architect, Howard Rourke," Caitlin replied.

"Yeah," Roxy said sarcastically, lighting up another cigarette. "That's just what _I_ was thinking, Kat. Sheeesh!"

"I got the top floor bedroom," Harry called dibs. "Beach side."

"What? Oh, come on man!" Grunge whined.

Ignoring her teammates' childish behavior, Caitlin decided to bite the bullet and walked up to the 'front door' (although it really was difficult to tell on such a building exactly which side was the 'front'), and rung the doorbell. It was quickly answered by a young woman, probably only half a decade older than any of them, if even by that much. She was somewhere between Roxy and Caitlin's height, although it was difficult to tell at the moment with her wearing stiletto heels, had pixie-cut dark-blonde hair, and was wearing the classical 'maid' outfit, a mid-thigh-length black work-dress with a pure white apron on the front. Upon seeing them all, she smiled brightly.

"Hi, we're sorry to bother you—" the amazonian redhead started to say, but was cut off.

"Why, hello Caitlin!" the maid interrupted. "Please come inside! My name's Anna. I'm the house-keeper." She explained this as she opened the door fully and allowed them all inside the expensive Southern Californian home.

"Sweet crib!" Grunge commented upon seeing the inside of the tiered building. "I'm beginning to dig this Rourke dude."

"Actually, he's dead," Caitlin informed him.

"Uhh, right. I totally knew that," Grunge said.

"I'm just fixing some breakfast," Anna told them, closing the door. "Make yourselves at home."

"Well, well," Lynch spoke up from his spot on the couch in the living room, just off to the side from the main entrance, with a grand view of the 'back yard', which just so happened to include pool, garden, and a fantastic view of the beach. "I'm glad to see you all made it here."

" _WHOA_!" Grunge exclaimed, "Lynch—Kickin' back? Better check him out, Harry!"

"I missed you too, Chang," Lynch said dryly. "Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed your little vacation. Because _school_ is now in session!"

That statement hung in the air for about ten seconds before, Harry called out, "Top bedroom!" and then vanished as he super-sped his way up the stairs.

"Dude!" Grunge cried out, running after him. "Seriously UN-cool!"

"Hey, I want one with a beach-side view!" Roxy called, charging after them.

"Nice seeing you again, Mr. Lynch!" Caitlin said helplessly as she waved and hurried to pick out her own room. Maybe on the top floor as well...?

Rainmaker didn't say a word as she silently made her way down the halls to see if there was a ground-floor bedroom she could take advantage of. Preferably one with easy access to either the pool or the beach. Bobby, likewise, kept his peace, but he was just as enthusiastic as his teammates in climbing the stairs to find his own bedroom.

Having been left sitting there on the couch, Lynch just sighed and closed his eyes, bringing the cold beer in his hands up to his forehead in hopes of staving off the tension headache he felt coming on. This was not what he had signed up for! Nevertheless, they were all stuck together now, and they had to make the best of it.

END 4/4.

(AN: _To Be Continued..._ in **Gen13: Mystics** … _?_ )

(AN2: I haven't actually gotten any comments in the reviews about it yet, but I felt it necessary to go ahead and defend myself against them anyway. If you've read the story far enough to even get to this point, well, first of all Thanks For Reading, and secondly, you may have noticed the... nonlinear method of chapter-placement that I employed. Let me assure you, it was all Very Much Intentional. If you actually do want to read things in "chronological order" well, then, start with Chapter 71 of my "Evil Guy's Fantasies" story, and then immediately proceed to read chapters one thru five of my crossover story "Harry Potter and Project Genesis", before going to Chapter 4 of this story, and then Chapter 1, Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 2 and finally this Chapter, _**in that order**_. If you want to be chronological about the whole thing. Frankly, I never could get my hands on the 'chronological' issues of my comics, and found myself reading about events that happened after or before other issues I'd already read. Anyway, by the time of this posting, Chapter 1 of "Gen13: Mystics" is already complete and I'm beginning work on Chapter 2. Feel free to leave plenty of Reviews if you have questions, comments, or suggestions. This story is still new enough that I'd more than welcome _specific suggestions_ as well as constructive criticism. Thank You For Reading, Hope You Enjoyed, Please Review!)


	7. BONUS: Deleted Scenes from HP&PG Ch5

Deleted/Extended Scenes from " _Harry Potter And Project Genesis_ " Chapter 5 Fight Scene:

 _She took a running leap, jumped and aimed a flying kick for Threshold's head._

 _Seeing the danger, the blond man quickly moved out of the way. He was trained in more than just how to use his powers, he was a martial arts master and a skilled soldier. Seeing Fairchild basically bury herself up to the waist from the force of her missed kick, he took the opportunity to mock her once more. "Oh, you're gonna have to be a little faster than that, honey!" He then sent a psychokinetic wave to 'help' her out of where she was stuck._

 _Just before the wave of force could reach her, however, she disappeared and reappeared next to the others with the addition of one more._

Harry ran from the base with Bliss 'frozen' over his shoulder in a Fireman's cradle. To his surprise, he could still move her body, the same way he could anybody else at 'normal' speed even at his new 'super' speed and without affecting her temporal paralysis either. There was no way to say exactly what she was experiencing on her end of things given that it took her just over a minute and a half just to blink at normal speed, and that may as well be an hour for him at super speed.

Recalling his first Professional Quidditch match, given how fast things had moved, he knew that when things happen too fast for your senses to register the change, a human won't even recognize anything happening at all, and things that were registered meanwhile take a while for the mind to process so you wouldn't even know you saw or heard something until minutes or sometimes even days after the event. He hoped that would prove to be the case with Bliss here. He didn't want to think what it would be like to be paralyzed while things go on around you. He'd experienced that a few too many times himself to wish it on someone else. Even enemies.

Going off of the images and sensations he got from the psychic flash, Harry was trying to track down Caitlin and the rest of their team. It took him only a few real-time-seconds to find them and track them down. Not so surprising, they were fighting Threshold. He was currently on the ground, apparently having been knocked back from whatever they'd just done that created the psychic backlash that got his attention in the first place. Caitlin was in the process of running at him from where she'd left Roxy and Grunge by the riverside. To be fair though, it wasn't strictly speaking a river, more accurately it was the runoff from the base's drainage pipe into a pond of watery sewage that was right across from the dumpsters where all the trash was thrown out.

While scouting for a place to put Bliss down for a bit, he came across an unconscious Burnout, and a hiding Sarah, though it was clear she wanted to get into the fight she was smart enough to realize when she was outmatched. He decided to just put the older GenActive down in a crevice that was more out of sight than truly defensible, and then hurried back over to Bobby and Sarah.

"Hey," he said after slowing down to normal speed and slapping the blond boy across the face. "Wake up matchstick! Fight's not over just yet." At that moment he heard a loud crash and Threshold shout out his taunt at Caitlin apparently. Not willing to wait on the unconscious boy to come around on his own, he punched him, twice, at super speed. That seemed to do the trick as his eyes snapped open in the next instant. Job done, Harry raced over the hill to where he'd last seen Caitlin racing at Threshold, and did not like what he saw.

Fairchild was in it up to her hips, literally seeing as her legs were buried in the earth and she couldn't pull herself free. Not in time to avoid the psychokinetic blast Threshold was sending her way, tearing up the earth and rock in its wake. Having wasted enough time, he wasted no more and pushed himself to use as much speed as possible, warping time around his body so that everything was practically at a standstill while he was moving so fast that even a hummingbird's wings wouldn't be moving from his perspective as he ran the short distance down the hill to where Kat was half-buried in the sand. It brought back the burning, hot/cold, moving-through solid earth sensations which he'd thought had gone away by now, but he got to her before the blast had covered even half the distance. Good thing too as she was really stuck in there and while he was super fast, none of that equated to super strength, and while he wasn't about to say it to her face or out loud, she had packed on some serious weight in recent hours.

Finally he just started digging, at super speed, and dug enough of her loose that he could drag her most of the way out of the hole and onto the more stable non-hole-filled ground. Once that was done, he brought her into his time frame, sharing his super speed with her as he'd done the day before after they'd left the cave.

"Harry? Harry!" she cried, hugging him tight. He certainly didn't mind, but they were still in the path of the blast so he quickly moved them past the 'happy to see you's.

"Kat, not the time," he pointed and dragged her at the same time. Thankfully she was pretty quick on her feet herself, so he didn't struggle for long. If she didn't want to go somewhere, it was plenty clear that she wouldn't be taken easily.

"So, what's the plan?" she asked as they reached the others, which had been joined by a reluctant Rainmaker by this point. She was in the middle of helping Roxy pull Grunge to his feet, so probably hoping to get them all to cover and try to ambush their attacker while he was distracted with the obvious target of Caitlin.

"Uh, give me a minute," Harry answered his co-team leader. "For now, let's play it cool, see if we can't make this guy mad enough he starts making mistakes. Ready?"

"Would it change anything if I said no?" the redhead whimpered.

"Not really," he shrugged before shifting things back to normal speed and addressing the aggressor.

" _Fast enough for you, Callahan?" Harry Potter, aka Wizard, asked pleasantly._

" _Potter!" he snarled._

" _Present!" he smiled and waved like a student in class._

" _So there are six of you now, it won't change your odds of survival," he laughed._

" _Don't count us out yet, muggle," Harry shot back. "Rainmaker, get to Burnout, help him out. Roxy..."_

" _It's Freefall now, Wizard," she interrupted._

" _Freefall," he nodded. "You're with me. Grunge, Fairchild, hit him hard. Remember pizza night?"_

 _They all, except Threshold, stopped and shot disbelieving looks at their teammate. "Please tell me you're kidding?" Fairchild begged. "That this is your way of making us laugh when things are dire and we need to keep a calm and steady head instead of panicking and letting our fear get the better of us. Please!"_

" _Nope, sorry," he shrugged, unapologetic._

" _That poor man," Rainmaker said with pity as she made her way over to Burnout. "He has no idea what is coming. Pity."_

The night in question happened about a month after they'd all gotten there and acclimated to pretty much everything they were being put through. Leaving out a few stories that had happened between them as they were getting to know one another, the team had finally come together the day before after Sarah Rainmaker finally broke down and asked for help. Tonight they were celebrating, of a sort, with a group study session.

"Dude," Grunge said around a mouthful of food, "how'd you get pizza in here?"

"I have my ways," Harry replied, using a similar line to what the Weasley Twins always said whenever they got back from Hogsmeade in the middle of the night. "Besides, you lot said you wanted pizza, so I got you pizza. Stopped the whining, didn't it?"

"Can't fault you there," Sarah agreed, before taking a bite of her own slice.

"Mm," Caitlin started to ask, quickly swallowing her own mouthful of delicious gooey melted cheese oven-toasted crust and pepperoni-sliced goodness, "I've got a a question. _Where_ did you get this from? This has got to be the best pizza I've ever had!"

"I'll say," Roxy moaned in equal appreciation. "I'd almost say it's better than a New York slice. _Almost_!"

Harry just smiled at them, his eyes twinkling merrily as he kept the origin of the pizza a mystery.

"All right everybody, we need to focus, otherwise the pizza party doesn't have a valid excuse and it will be taken away faster than Grunge can make yet another disgusting body noise," Bobby told them. As though he were proving the point, the shortest member of the team (though only by a half an inch) let loose with a rather loud and smelly belch that had all of them waving the air in front of their noses. "Let's get some actual work done, for once maybe?"

"Sorry," Grunge apologized, already reaching for another slice.

"Bobby's right," Harry said. "All right, first question of the practice test." They all, except Grunge, reached for their books and notes.

"You are faced with overwhelming odds with limited provisions, weapons, and numbers," Bobby read from the workbook they were studying out of. "Your objective is to escape. Explain your strategy, tactics, and method of escape. Cite reasons and page numbers and source material for your answers."

"... Are they kidding?" Roxy blurted out after an uncomfortable silence.

"Read the third question," Harry pointed out to her.

"Third... Same scenario, objective is to eliminate target for _assassination_? What the...!" she screeched.

"Let's just take it one question at a time, all right guys?" Caitlin suggested, her pen already to paper. "I think I saw something in the workbooks that might be acceptable..."

"Running and hiding isn't a valid strategy?" Grunge asked, cleaning some earwax out with his pinky.

"And the scenario, it's rather vague," Harry added. "Overwhelming odds? Clear as mud. Bloody scientists and their bloody tests!"

"Whoa, don't go all English on us, Wizard!" Roxy laughed. "The scenario stats are on the back of the first page. We're supposed to use our own 'team' as our forces, and it lists what we're up against and everything. In this case, over a thousand troops based out of a remote location camp, all armed with the latest infantry tech, no snipers, but SpecOps intermingled with Mercs and new recruits. They got... lets see here, ah! Ten tanks, two choppers, a fleet of jeeps and humvees, and sufficient supplies to outlast us on any engagement. Huh, that's all it says. Harry's right, this doesn't tell us anything! We're making wild guesses here!"

Harry snorted, recalling that his Divination homework used to work the same way. He paused for a moment, considering. Well, why not? It worked for Trelawney and whoever else graded his and Ron's homework, it could work here.

"All right, let's assume we're talking about this base, and it's a thousand Keepers plus other goons. Objective is to escape, how do we do it?" Harry prompted them.

They spent the next couple hours playing out scenario after scenario, strategy after strategy, Caitlin writing down the better of their ideas and then all of them copying from her, since it was a group effort after all. Eventually they got to the last question.

"You are faced with an SPB of unknown power level and ability. How do you respond?"

"Heh, I'll tackle him while you guys figure out a way to take him down, duh!" Grunge crowed, excited since it was the last question.

"That's your big plan?" Sarah rolled her eyes at the surfer-jock. "Be a distraction while the rest of us try and figure out a way to save you and stop something with unknown powers? That is idiotic!"

"Nuh-unh," Grunge rather maturely replied. "Besides, you guys could like, what was that word we used five questions ago? Oh yeah, you guys could like bracket him, sort of ambush him one after the other while I keep harassing the dude, or babe, or whatever."

"With what?" the Native American argued.

"Uhh..."

"Standard Keeper equipment, it says here," Bobby pointed out.

"Oh, I'll just take all the grenades and stuff 'em down my pants before rushing the guy!" Grunge answered proudly. "He won't see 'em coming! And I can like use my totally bad ass madcap skills to stun him before stuffing the grenades down _his_ pants! Hah!"

"That... actually isn't a bad idea, especially if we use stealth instead of relying on Grunge's cunning in the field," Harry said before the argument could further escalate. "Attack with standard capture and detain procedures, then have Grunge 'break protocol' and go all out, and while the SPB is dealing with an insane berserker, Roxy or I stealth our way and tag him, or her, or it with explosives and then Sarah and Bobby go at the SPB with long-range sniper and demolition barrages. Kat can pull Grunge out, or any of us that get targeted while whoever is available goes in to collar them, taking them out after they're down. Sometimes the simple things are what work best."

"Yeah, but simple isn't what they're looking for here," Caitlin said, gesturing to the workbook. "They want a, literally, by the book answer to this. But who knows, maybe one day we'll actually be faced with an SPB we have to take down and we can use your strategy then, Harry."

"Yeah, OK, but still it's a nice idea," Harry shrugged.

"Dude," Grunge nodded and shared a brief high-five with his teammate.

" _We're up first," Wizard whispered to Freefall._

" _Wh-whu-what?!" she screeched._

" _Ah, Miss Spaulding," Threshold laughed as he stalked closer. "Where did we leave off upstairs?"_

 _Reminded of one of the worst experiences of her life, made all the more raw by just how recent it was, Freefall quickly got over her fear and began concentrating, activating her powers intentionally this time. Wizard shot her an appreciative look as it was the first he'd seen of her powers. The appreciation raised as she was surrounded by an electric-blue glow, covering her entire body and flowing like the flames of a fire. Threshold actually stopped, stunned and a bit taken aback as the last he'd seen her she still had yet to manifest._

 _All the loose debris and rocks around them soon took to the air and decided gravity moved in a new direction; toward Threshold! Seeing the projectiles moving, Threshold quickly took to the air, dodging them. She kept up the barrage however, managing to land some glancing blows that tore at his cape. Seeing this, he scowled and shot a blast of energy at her, unlike the previous this was clearly visible as a beam of light! Of course that could be because it was traveling at the speed of light, but fortunately there was someone nearby that could match that, or at least come real close._

 _Wizard moved Freefall out of the way right before Threshold's attack would have hit, and while she had her guard up and her gravity powers might have protected her, he reasoned that it was better not to take any hits at all in a fight, even if you could take them. He put her behind the flying menace, just out of sight, his finger on his lips before pointing at a pile of very sharp rocks he'd piled up right beneath their adversary. Nodding, Freefall reactivated her aura and focused on those rocks perforating Threshold like moldy Swiss Cheese!_

"Whoa! What's goin' on here?" Roxy exclaimed as Harry grabbed her and started dragging her away from Threshold's target area. The punk-haired girl looked around at everything, in particularly the still quickly moving—just more like a baseball than a bullet—psionic blast of Threshold, and finally at her teammate who was quickly dragging her away from the attack and toward the rocks beneath their flying opponent. "Wow, so Wizard got some nice bonuses with his powers, huh?"

"You could say that," Harry laughed as they ran and jumped, narrowly managing to get behind cover as the blast impacted. It was quite fascinating to watch really, like a slow-motion capture except for real instead of on TV. They covered their eyes and ducked their heads when it got too bright to look at, only looking up when the sound of the explosion reached them a full 'thirty seconds' later.

"Whoa," Roxy stared at where they'd just been standing. "Thanks man, for saving my life. I don't know if I could've blocked that after all."

"Oh, I'm sure you could have, but lets not test that right now, eh?" he gave her his most charming smile. Well, she and Kat had both called it his charming smile, to him it was just a smile and that was it.

"For now, I've got to help the others and set up the ambushes, think you can..." he stopped talking as he brought them back to normal speed and put _his finger on his lips before pointing at a pile of very sharp rocks he'd piled up right beneath their adversary. Nodding, Freefall reactivated her aura and focused on those rocks perforating Threshold like moldy Swiss Cheese!_

 _Somehow, probably because he was just that good, Threshold sensed the threat and dodged out of the way, in the process catching sight of Freefall standing alone and unharmed. He thought he'd atomized her with his last blast, but there must be more to her powers than the obvious. "Very impressive, Roxanne," he laughed. "Given a little time and experience, you might prove to be a worthy adversary. Too bad you'll never get that chance!" He brought his hands together and began to focus his power between them._

 _Right as the orb of glowing light began to form, however, he was assaulted from a new direction! A firestorm of plasma assailed him, losing his concentration on the psychokinetic attack as he shifted to defense. Looking past the flames, he saw Rainmaker and Burnout, just outside his range, pooling their powers, his plasma blasts and her wind tunnel, and focusing it against him. "Hah!" he laughed again. "Impressive! Most impressive! But not nearly good enough!"_

Harry ran over to where Rainmaker and Burnout were just out of sight to check on them.

"You guys OK?" he asked, pulling them both into his time frame with hands on either shoulder.

"Uh, yeah," Burnout said, a bit unsteady as he shook his head to clear out the cobwebs.

"I'm fine, I don't need your... your..." her rant about not needing help trailed off as Rainmaker finally took notice of what was happening around them. Specifically how everything was practically frozen, from falling rocks, clouds of dust, and more importantly their friends and Threshold.

"Whoa," Burnout remarked after noticing the same thing. "I guess we don't have to ask what your powers are, Wizard."

"Heh, yeah, we'll talk about that later," Harry said, a bit uncomfortable at his new 'name'. Not that they had time for _that_ particular discussion in any case. "In the mean time, you two need to combine your powers! Rainmaker's wind can strengthen the fire of your plasma blasts, enough to actually get past whatever he's using to protect himself!"

"We're not close enough for that!" Rainmaker argued, right before things kind of went blurry for her and the next thing she was aware, the three of them were behind Threshold and just over a football fields length away. "What just happened?"

"What's going on isn't me stopping time," the messy-haired youth told her, "It's actually me speeding _us_ up. I just stopped speeding you two up for a couple of... well, to me it felt like minutes, but it was probably only a few nanoseconds, while I half-dragged, half-ran the two of you to this vantage point. Start with the firestorm already! I'll keep you, er—accelerated works, I guess—for as long as I can. But then I have to move Roxy again. I also need to get Grunge ready for his part in all this."

"We're seriously going with that plan?" Rainmaker sighed, focusing on her gift to conjure up a wind funnel, aimed right at Threshold. Burnout beside her was also starting up a fireball just as they'd done it before. To their surprise though, the moment that the effects of their powers started to really pick up, it kind of, well, froze in mid-air. Though, not entirely, it just started moving as slow as everything else.

Harry just shrugged, making sure to keep a hand on the both of them. "What can I say? New powers, new rules. Apparently I can accelerate _you_ , just not your _powers_. Or at least, not the effect they have outside a certain range. Let it build up, and keep it on target. I'll have to go move Roxy by the time he fires that blast."

"That's OK," Burnout said. "If we let this thing build up too much, it would blow up in our faces. Right now, it's just going to be extra hot."

"I'll..." Rainmaker grunted, beginning to sweat a little, "... see if I... can't... get a bit... more... wind... speed... out of this! But if I get it going _too_ fast... it will tear the skin off our bones and level the base with the force of a bomb!"

"Right," Harry nodded, and then noticed that the orb of energy had finished forming and Threshold was making to push it forward. "Looks like time is up! Good luck you two, keep it going as long as you can, I'll come and move you when he notices you!" And with that, he let go of them and raced around to move Freefall, noticing that as he did, the firestorm his teammates had created between the pair of them was moving like a lightning strike towards Threshold. IE, very fast, fast enough that he could see the progress of it through the air even as he ran at close to top speed to get to Freefall.

As soon as he reached her, he didn't bother slowing down, merely grabbing her in his arms and then making for where Fairchild and Grunge, dropping her off along the way in another of Threshold's blind spots. As soon as he reached the two he was aiming for, he took the time to actually deactivate his powers and rest for a few seconds. Fortunately, the more he used his new-found powers, the quicker he seemed to adapt to them. At first, when he ran it was difficult to even move and he remembered binge-eating in the kitchen not even a full day ago, and he'd had repeat performances since then. Luckily each time he consumed less, meaning he needed less or was burning through his energy more slowly, at the very least not as quickly as when he'd first started. Still, it didn't mean he wasn't getting tired.

He watched, as time sped up for him again, as Burnout and Rainmaker's firestorm reached and swamped Threshold in mid-air. They even managed to keep it up, even after it became obvious that he was still able to protect himself from it all somehow. Freefall started a new barrage from her different position, but the bastard still managed to protect himself, though he wasn't counter-attacking as effectively as when they'd first started. Seeing this, Harry figured now was the perfect time for the next phase of their plan.

Looking over at Grunge and Fairchild, he nodded and said, "Bombs away!"

"Awesome!" Grunge laughed and reached down to absorb/transform his body into a stone golem again.

Fairchild nodded, keeping her comments to herself for the moment, and then easily picked up the multi-ton Grunge and after taking a moment to carefully aim, launched him straight at the defending SPB attacker. Seeing the plan coming together, Harry nodded to himself and decided to step back for a bit, see how things would play out. Hopefully get a couple of real-time minutes to rest.

 _He focused his powers in pushing back the fire attack as he had the previous. To his shock he found that it wouldn't turn back! The most he seemed to be able to do with it was keep it at bay! How...? Before he could contemplate too long on the impossibility of their combination attack, he found himself dodging a new flurry of projectiles from Freefall. Those he could redirect, but in keeping up his defenses he could not spare the attention to send it back to its source. Besides that, the girl seemed to disappear and reappear every time he blinked! And worst of all, he'd lost track of Fairchild and Potter amidst all of this!_

" _Here's mud in your eye!" a voice screamed from right behind him._

 _Turning, he only had a moment to see a stone golem version of Grunge flying through the air right at him, screaming, "YEEAAARGH!" He hit with the force of missile strike. They both went flying off towards the larger rocks, the firestorm exploding in their wake._

" _I'll crush you like an insect!" Threshold screamed into the stone-Grunge's ear, but before he could make good on his threat, he was, almost literally, between a rock and a hard place as they crashed into the mountainside of the Genesis Compound. They both rolled and fell and slid all the way back to the desert floor, Grunge not really getting hurt by the experience as he was solid stone at the time, but Threshold definitely came away with a few more bruises than before._

 _Grunge, of course, was the first one back on his feet and immediately charged the psychopath. "Enjoy the view while you can, Threshold, cause I'm the man who's about to rock your world back to reality!"_

" _You must be suffering from delusions of grandeur!" Threshold growled, getting to his feet as he psychically held Grunge in his grasp. "I'll admit, I underestimated your powers earlier, but you are still an insect, Chang! One I believe I promised to crush!" He psychically broke off and then disintegrated the stone being's right arm, and then sent him flying, no doubt to bleed out as soon as he reverted back to human._

Harry witnessed all of this from the cliff face closest to the base, but still within line of sight of the battle, the still immobilized Bliss standing frozen next to him as he sat cross-legged, attempting to center his energy and prepare for what was to come. Threshold was right up there with Voldemort or any of his top Death Eaters, only instead of dark magic, the man—villain was a master of his Gen Power, and he had years of experience at using it. Though they outnumbered him and had more diverse powers, it was all they could do to keep him off-balance.

Harry recalled, even at the end, the Final Battle of Hogwarts, when it was just him and Tom, it was only _after_ all the Horcruxes had been destroyed, and the both of them had been up for days by that point. Harry certainly hadn't gotten any sleep, having broken into Gringotts, stolen from the Lestrange Vault, _escaped_ from Gringotts, and then immediately gone to Hogsmeade and broken into Hogwarts, during which the next thirty-six hours were spent identifying, locating, and destroying the remaining Horcruxes before going into the Forest to 'die' and be brought back in Hagrid's arms moments before the Final Battle truly began. The only sleep he'd truly gotten at the time was during his 'death' and being carried by Hagrid while pretending to still be dead.

Now, here he was, in a remarkably similar set of circumstances, just with a different enemy.

God his life sucked!

… And he's been spending way too much bloody time around American teenagers...

Grunge and Threshold falling down the mountain gave Harry at least a solid two minutes rest, which he took full advantage of. One thing that he'd been forced to notice about his GenActive powers was that they 'recharged' as fast as he did. In other words, they were just like any other physical ability. With magic, which had its own limitations, it was mostly a matter of mental discipline, but then nobody can concentrate on just one thing and only one thing for an extended amount of time. With his speed, or time manipulation powers, whichever it turned out to be, they worked perfectly fine when he was rested and fed, but then started to fail or be more difficult to use when he was tired and hungry. Thanks to Project Genesis' constant physical training they'd put him and the others through, he was in the best shape of his life. That, he truly believed, was the only reason he hadn't already collapsed and slept for a month already.

Seeing Threshold get back on his feet and powering up before charging full-speed towards where he'd left Burnout and Rainmaker, Harry got to his own feet, break over. He briefly glanced at the still frozen Bliss and nodded, confirming that she wouldn't be going anywhere. Then he 'accelerated' himself and as quickly as safety would allow (despite the time distortion he gave off, from his point of view he still fell at the same rate as always when jumping from the rocks), he made his way down to where Fairchild and the others were standing and quickly pulled her to his 'speed'.

"Harry!" she exclaimed with a wide smile after he'd taken her hand in his. "I think it is going well, don't you? Where did Grunge end up? I saw him flying off, I assume you caught him."

"Uh..." Harry blinked and actually slapped himself on the forehead. "Right, sorry. Let's go, shall we? Threshold is at least five seconds away from Freefall, Rainmaker and Burnout here. That gives us plenty of time to go check on Grunge."

"What were you doing instead?" she yelled at him as they ran in the direction Grunge was still falling in.

"Resting, if you must know," he snapped back, doing his best to keep up with the girl's longer and stronger legs. "This isn't exactly easy, and like the rest of you I'm figuring it out on the fly. I have to 'slow down' to 'normal' time here and there. Fortunately, a few minutes seems to do the trick, and Threshold and Grunge falling down the side of that mountain wasn't exactly instantaneous, so I was a couple kilometers away, watching from afar. Oh, there he is," he stopped and pointed at their falling friend. It was kind of like looking at one of those fake birds or fish in dioramas really, given that they couldn't even register him as moving at all.

"Oh thank god," Fairchild breathed a sigh of relief. She pointed, saying, "Look, his trajectory takes him to the pond over there. He might have some bruising from the massive belly flop, but the water landing will cushion him enough to survive."

"Not to mention," he added, "fix his arm. Take a look. Whatever Threshold did before throwing him, his arm is just gone. Provided that Grunge doesn't need to revert to human before metamorphing into a different element, there shouldn't be any trouble."

" _Shouldn't?_ " Fairchild asked, the stress clear in her tone.

"Well, why don't you go pick up a mountain and crush the bastard with it?" Harry shot right back. "We don't know what has happened to us, Kat! We're dealing with the unknown! These powers could all go away tomorrow, or in a year, or even after we die our bodies would still be using these powers! There is no way to know exactly what will happen to Grunge. But if we were to jump up and catch him, at the speed we're moving at compared to him..." he trailed off, knowing that she already knew the answer.

She sighed and nodded her head, calming down. "We would kill him," she acknowledged. "The force alone, even if we were as gentle as could be, from his arrested momentum would shatter the rest of his metamorphed body. If he were still flesh and blood, we'd break most of the bones in his body. And the only way to get to him would be to jump, at super speed... So. He should be OK then?"

"Once we pound on Threshold a bit more, giving Grunge enough time to drop a bit more, I'll check on him. Maybe get to him right before he hits and let him consciously absorb the water element instead of after he's drowning in it," he promised.

"All right," she nodded and together, hand in hand, they turned back towards the still charging Threshold. "Let's finish this."

Allowing her to cover the majority of the distance, Harry just held on for dear life as Fairchild jumped and ran back the way they'd come and positioned them a couple meters in front of the glowing human meteorite that was their enemy. Once in position, they briefly contemplated how to continue their assault on him.

"So, uh, how do we do this?" she asked. "Doesn't his shield protect him from my hits? Especially when he's like this?"

"Like with any defense, there has to be a limitation," he pointed out. "He's not just shielding himself, he's flying, and then there are probably a couple dozen other things he's simultaneously using his powers on the we're not even aware of. Leaving him with a finite amount of energy to use in his defenses. Remember the basics they taught us about ballistics?"

"You mean basic Newtonian physics?" she deadpanned.

He smiled, recalling their study nights where he'd struggled to comprehend something that she claimed to have known since the 5th Grade. He nodded and answered, "Yeah. Specifically _E_ _k_ _½_ _mv_ _2_. Kinetic energy of an object in motion is equal to one half times mass of the object times the velocity of the object squared. Increase the numbers, and I'm thinking our velocity, and we increase the energy we can unleash. Enough velocity, enough energy, and perhaps, just perhaps, it will be enough to overcome the energy he's putting towards his defenses."

"Is there a reason that we're just standing here talking about this instead of getting a running start?" she asked.

He shrugged and answered, "It takes a bit for the brain to process visual input, right?" She nodded. "Well, not that I want to tell him what our edge is, but I rather like the idea of him starting to think he's seeing things, such as us just standing here holding hands while he charges right at us."

"Yeah, about that?" she inquired.

"Be grateful I'm not Grunge, Fairchild, otherwise I might make some crude comment," he laughed. "I've tried, multiple times in the past couple hours to accelerate somebody without touching them. Hasn't worked yet. Even to er, _decelerate_ someone, like I did with Bliss, it requires physical contact. Unlike decelerating though, if I want to keep you at my, uh, 'speed' I guess will work, then I have to keep up the contact. Best I can figure is that with decelerating, I'm somehow draining energy from the target, whereas what we're doing here, I'm either sharing or giving you extra energy. Then again, maybe I'll be able to do it eventually, but I need more experience or more energy than what I have available right now."

"OK, fair enough," she shrugged. "How do we do this?"

"Running start?" he suggested.

"Hm," she said thoughtfully. "That, and maybe a bit of centrifugal force, and I'll have to hit him just right. Where do we want him to end up anyway? Should we pinball him around a bit, or what?"

"Let's send him over to where Grunge will land," he said. "That way I won't have far to go in order to get everybody in place. Hmm..."

"What?" she asked, taking a few steps back and coiling her muscles in preparation.

"Just a thought," he answered, "about what we can do with him once we get him where we want him. Anyway, he's already gone two and a half feet since we first got here, that should've been enough for his eyes to catch a glimpse of us. Ready?"

"Are you?" she shot back at him. "You're the one that will be doing half the work."

"Right," he nodded. "OK, a couple more steps back, let me accelerate things a bit more..." From his point of view he was now holding onto a rather lethargic Fairchild, and from hers he was now vibrating with energy, both literally and figuratively, and Threshold's progress, which was already a crawl, became practically non-existent. "NowImgointospinyouaroundrealquickkeepinthingstightandwhenIletgoofyourotherarmletitrip!"

Despite the high-speed-chipmunk voice it was delivered with, Fairchild was still able to decipher the gist of what Wizard was telling her, so she gave a short quick nod, and the next thing she knew they were running right at the still-glowing Threshold and Harry was picking her up and spinning her in a tight circle by both wrists, and right as they were about to hit the still-form of the deranged GenActive, he let go of her right wrist. That was the signal she was waiting for and with every fiber of her being, she unleashed the hardest, fastest, most devastating punch she had in her life to date, right at his unguarded side, angling so his trajectory would take him in the direction of the pond. She felt her fist dig in a bit to his body, and any resistance was momentary if there at all. The most amazing thing, she thought, was that he was already moving despite the speed the two of them were moving at. He had to be going almost half as fast as they were moving, so while it was certainly incredibly fast at normal speeds, it still looked like he was actually moving rather than the slow crawl they'd seen before.

"Whoa," Harry commented, standing beside her, still holding tight to her left hand. "Did you break something? I hope you broke something."

"Nah, got him in the soft tissue," she replied with a self-satisfied grin. "Kidney shot."

"Owch," he winced.

"Shall we?" she gestured.

"We shall," he laughed in reply and they quickly outraced the flying/falling Threshold.

 _Now officially pissed off, Threshold made his way back to the rest of the insects, his aura a glowing corona of power about him as he broke the land speed record in a matter of seconds. Too bad there was somebody there that could break it in nanoseconds._

 _Threshold thought, for just an instant, that he saw Potter and Fairchild right in front of him, holding hands of all things, the next thing he knew, he felt like he'd just been hit by the Hulk in Extreme Pissed Off Mode! He might have even passed out as he was flying through the air. He came to a rather rude awakening, finding himself still flying through the air, over the river in fact, where a water-Grunge was hosing him down with the entire lake's worth of water in an unending geyser of force! The force of the water was so strong that it was keeping him aloft more than his own powers were!_

 _Then Freefall, Burnout, and Rainmaker were there and the next thing he knew he was drowning in mid-air as Freefall did something with the water's gravity that kept it around him, Rainmaker did something to keep it flowing and moving around him so his powers couldn't get a grip on the molecules, and Burnout of course just shot flames at it, setting it to boil him alive!_

 _Threshold hadn't had this much fun in years!_

 _Taking a moment to concentrate, ignoring the pain and heat and desperate need to breathe, he put his hands to his temples, and basically set off a psychokinetic bomb all around him. They fought it of course, Rainmaker and Freefall showing the greatest strain to keep the prison going, but they could not hold one such as him back! The watery prison and flames dissipated in the wake of his bid for freedom, but unfortunately it took everything he had, even what he'd been using to keep himself aloft!_

 _Falling to the rocks below, he struggled to keep breathing, coughing out what felt like maybe a gallon or two of water in the process. Talented kids, he mused to himself._

They picked up Burnout, Freefall and Rainmaker on their way, which slowed them down a bit, leading credence to Wizard's theory of how his powers worked, not to mention it was just awkward them all holding onto a piece of him like that. Thankfully, during the initial confusion of trying to walk across rocky terrain as a huddled group, they quickly figured out that they could just hold each others hands and whatever it was that Wizard did to them passed through the ones he was actually holding on to. Single-file line went much quicker than playing at hiding under the Invisibility Cloak with five instead of three.

Once at the river's edge, just off from the pond where Grunge was only now splashing down, they stopped to take a break. Apparently Harry wasn't the only one having to deal with the stress of moving at hyper speed as, aside from Fairchild, they were all a little winded from a short trek that shouldn't have even raised their pulse rate.

"OK, everybody catch their breath," Harry said as they reached the edge of the water. "And maybe brainstorm a few ideas on what we can do next."

They all sat down, still holding hands, Wizard in the middle, Fairchild holding his right hand and Freefall holding hers, Rainmaker holding his left hand and Burnout holding hers. The redhead was the first to start spouting off ideas.

"We need to find a way to contain him, keep him in one spot long enough for us to bombard him from all sides, wear him down," she said.

"Great, how do you suggest we do that?" Freefall asked with no small amount of sarcasm. They all knew from experience that it was mostly her exhaustion talking.

"Perhaps a combination of our abilities?" Rainmaker suggested after a brief silence.

"What do you mean?" Burnout asked.

"Well," the Native America explained, "while it is clearly not the same, Roxy... sorry, _Freefall_ 's powers seem to be more effective against Threshold, probably because it is a different energy than what he can manipulate; gravity. Knowing Grunge, the second he gets back on his feet, he'll be hitting Threshold with everything he's got. Maybe try and drown him in water, and then have Rox—Freefall pull some gravity trick and trap him in a sphere of water so there is no way for him to get to the surface. Then... I can drop the temperature, buffet it with cold winds and perhaps even freeze the outer surface into a shell of ice. If we do it right, could even have... _Burnout_ set the water to boil."

Harry's and Fairchild's eyebrows went up at the suggestion. They glanced at each other, silently asking if it were even possible, as well as working it out for themselves.

"Hm," he mumbled. "Would be tricky."

"Given the principles of thermodynamics and the matter-state transition of water," Fairchild was also mumbling.

"Have to heat it from the bottom," Harry nodded.

"And freeze it from the top," she agreed. "Things would get... volatile in there."

"That would definitely disorient him," he said. "And protecting himself from boiling while trying to build up the power to overwhelm Freefall's gravity powers, it would drain him even more than the punch did. Wouldn't beat him, but it should knock him down for a bit. And Kat and I can be wherever he falls the instant before he lands to keep up the barrage. All right then!" Harry nodded firmly and got to his feet.

"Caitlin, stay here with Freefall, who should be ready the moment Grunge starts to deluge Threshold," he ordered. "I'll get Rainmaker and Burnout in place so they can start their bombardment the moment he's in the bubble. I'll also make sure that Grunge is ready and can actually do what we need him to in time. Anybody have any reservations about this? Now is definitely the time if there are any."

"I've got Freefall's back," Fairchild nodded her head determinedly.

"I'll be ready, Wizard," the bi-color-haired GenActive assured him.

"Just say where we need to be," Rainmaker agreed.

"Uh, Grunge is in the middle of the pond by now," Burnout pointed out. "Are you sure you can get to him in time? I mean, will you be swimming, or do you think you can run on water like in the comics?"

"It will be an interesting experiment," Harry admitted with a shrug. "OK, Kat, Rox, here's where you go back to normal time, so make for the rocks to hide yourselves until Threshold is in position." With that said, he gave them one last look of encouragement, and then let go of Fairchild's hand, allowing 'normal time' to take hold of the two of them once more.

"Burnout," Harry turned to the blond, "You'll need to be on the other side of the lake, and as soon as the bubble forms, just aim everything you've got at the bottom and give it your all. Rainmaker, up for a climb?"

"Where?" was all she said, already scouting the nearby slopes and hills, and even the (still under attack) base behind them.

"There," he pointed at the one he had in mind. "Gives a good vantage point and offers plenty of cover. Do you need line of sight, or just a general idea of where the target is going to be?"

"Line of sight helps, but once I know where the winds need to be focused, I can do it with my eyes closed, or in this case, hiding behind some rocks," she told him.

"Right then," he said, starting off, "let's get into position then."

From their perspective, it took them five minutes to get Burnout in position, and then another fifteen for Rainmaker, since they couldn't fly at hyper speed, the effects that would have allowed for it were just too slow from their current perspectives. Also, the energy would build up, so that by the time they *did* get aloft, the fires, or winds, would be so strong that it would be like a bomb exploding or a tornado touching down respectively. So, they had to go the 'normal' way.

Once everyone was in position, and Harry took note that Threshold was still reaching the apex of his parabola, but Grunge was nearly submerged. By the time he got back down to the pond, the last of his team had fully submerged, but at the same time, he could see that the metamorph's powers were already taking effect, _without_ having to revert to human form in the interim!

Seeing everything in place, he decided to sit back and watch the show. So, he quickly 'raced' back over to where he'd stashed Bliss and moved her a bit closer and then finally returned to 'normal speed' watched as their plan unfolded flawlessly. Once Threshold was where they wanted him, he ran and got Fairchild and 'appeared' before the fallen SPB, where she proceeded to restrain him in the most efficient method possible.

 _Next thing he knew, Potter and Fairchild were in front of him again, and she had her hand around his throat, holding him up easily. "I could twist your head off right now, you know that?" she threatened him. "Give me one good reason not to!"_

" _I'll give you two," Wizard said before Threshold could even get the breath to try speaking. "One." The black haired green eyed GenActive vanished and then reappeared on the redhead's other side, with... with his sister beside him! She was frozen, not moving at all, as though in the middle of blinking at an unbelievably slow pace. How...?_

" _Two," Wizard said as he touched Bliss on the cheek and suddenly she was moving normally and jumping back, startled at her sudden change of location. She fell back into Rainmaker's arms and was immediately rendered insensate by the girl's electrical powers._

" _Well, Mathew?" he asked with a great deal more menace than Fairchild could deliver, that was for sure._

" _Heh, heh, *cough*, hah hah hah!" he laughed amidst his choking. "Not bad children. Not bad at all. But even if I—*hrk!*—agree to your terms, what's to stop me from destroying you before I leave?"_

 _Almost in reply to the question, the top half of the base right next to them exploded with almost concussive force, knocking most of the planes out of the air! The only thing that saved them from the blast was that it was primarily directed up and outward while they were near the base and at ground level. So while they felt it, they weren't in danger from dying from the explosion itself. No, it was the falling debris that was the real danger._

" _This," Wizard finally replied, disappearing with Bliss, leaving her up on the cliff, directly under the falling debris. By the time he'd fully processed what position Potter had put him into, Threshold noticed all but Caitlin, who was still choking him (yes, despite the explosion), had disappeared the same way Potter kept disappearing and reappearing._

" _Let him go, Kat. We're done with him," Harry whispered to the girl, appearing by her side. Nodding, slowly, reluctantly, she let the psychopath go and they both vanished an eye-blink later. Not that Callahan cared, he was too busy saving his baby sister. Again!_

Harry quickly shuttled the entire team outside of the blast radius of the base as fast as his powers would permit, which was pretty damn fast. While he was running back and forth, however, he couldn't stop himself from wandering, and so on his last trip, instead of 'slowing down' to join his team in safety, he went back to where he'd placed Bliss, only to find burning wreckage already falling there. Fortunately, Threshold had indeed gotten to her in time and they were flying off along the ground, dodging the debris and wreckage from the base.

Seeing that they would both be fine, he breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he actually cared if they lived or died, and he felt that it would be better for everyone, he and his friends especially, if they _had_ died here, but fact of the matter was that he had placed Bliss in danger and Threshold was as exhausted as he was because of them. So, from a certain point of view, if they died, it would be as though he _had_ killed them, and he never wanted to be responsible for someone's death, not if he could help it.

Just before he ran off to a safe distance, he paused and looked back at the flying pair dodging debris. Stepping closer, he just stared at them for the longest time (half a microsecond), as all the things he wanted to say to them, ask them, accuse them of, condemn them for, they all bubbled up to the surface. But he just stood there, staring as they raced for their lives. For Harry, everything was moving fish in water, pretty quick, but in such a way and at a comparative speed that it was easy for him to get out of the way of anything truly dangerous.

He turned away and ran through the debris as fast as he could, not daring to look back. Besides, he wasn't one for gloating, and making accusations—no matter how good he felt for saying them—never did him any good his whole life through. He was still rather curious as to exactly how much they knew about him. His files with IO were strictly muggle information, he'd seen that and confirmed it at every level there was. But both Bliss and Threshold were telepaths, powerful ones and they'd both been in his mind multiple times. There was no way to say what they could or couldn't know about him. But he wasn't willing to risk his or his friends freedom for the chance to find out. It wasn't worth it. Might have taken him eighteen years to learn the lesson, but he'd learned it very well by this point.

Harry rejoined Caitlin, Bobby, Sarah, Roxy and Grunge where he'd dropped them off. He sat down next to the red haired amazon and made sure to keep his powers 'off' for the next little while, no exceptions. Grunge and Roxy were sort of cuddling together on the other side of the rocks he and Kat were on. Well, Roxy was doing most of the cuddling, Grunge looked like he was sleeping, but it was hard to tell since he wasn't snoring at the moment. Sarah and Bobby were at opposite ends, both with their arms crossed, quiet. They were all just watching as the giant sky scraper built on top of a mesa finished exploding and all the aircraft attacking it scattered. None of them said a word, just... taking the time to decompress.

Until they caught sight of a couple of those aircraft making their way towards their position that is.

END.


End file.
